China's economic expansion may have peaked, it has emerged.
The latest figures show that the country's trade surplus narrowed in December while its money supply growth has started to tail off.
According to the Chinese customs bureau, exports grew at the slowest pace for two years as competitiveness was hit by cooling global expansion, the appreciating Yuan and cuts to export-tax incentives on polluting industries.
"China's economic expansion may have peaked last year," Wang Tao, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in Beijing, told Bloomberg.
What's more, he suggested that China's central bank would need to take further action to limit credit, ease inflation and prevent the economy from over-heating.
"China needs to tighten monetary policy further, given that new loan growth may rebound," he said.
Further analysis of the Chinese economy could be supplied by Aranca, an end-to-end provider of on-demand, custom investment, business and economic research.
