BEIJING—China’s economy continued to show signs of cooling, with fixed-asset investment slowing to a nearly two-decade low for the first seven months of the year as trade tensions with the U.S. escalated.
Spending on factory machinery, public-works projects and other fixed-asset investments in China’s nonrural areas grew 5.5% in the January-July period from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.
The figure matched a record low in 1999, according to Wind Information, and is down significantly from the 8.3% growth recorded for the first seven months of 2017. It was also slower than the 6% increase recorded in the January-June period and undershot economists’ expectations.