China factory activity maintains growth in Nov

CHINA'S manufacturing activity stabilised in November, outperforming analysts' expectations of a retraction on rising credit costs and slower restocking of inventories by companies.

The official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) published on Sunday by the National Bureau of Statistics remained flat at 51.4; a separate survey by private investment bank HSBC put the PMI at 50.8, higher than the preliminary 50.4 flash figure released 10 days ago.

The PMI survey from the statistics bureau is based on responses from purchasing managers in 3,000 manufacturing companies. The HSBC survey comes from polling managers at more than 420 businesses, and is weighted towards smaller private companies.