China Caixin Manufacturing PMI: 2026 Schedule, Dates and What to Expect

The China Caixin Manufacturing PMI, now branded the RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI, is a monthly survey of purchasing managers at Chinese factories, compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. It is one of the first hard signals each month on how the world’s second largest economy is performing, and it usually lands before almost any other major data point. The next release is scheduled for September 1, 2026 at 9:45 am CST in Beijing, which is 9:45 pm ET on August 31 and 2:45 am in London on September 1. Release dates for the whole series are published by S&P Global on its PMI release calendar. Every date on this page can be added to your own diary using the ICS and Google Calendar feed at the top of this page, so each new reading appears automatically.

The last published reading was 50.9 for July 2026, released on August 3, 2026, below the 51.5 expected by economists polled ahead of the release. Anything above 50 signals expansion, anything below 50 signals contraction.

2026 and 2027 schedule

The table below lists every release date currently confirmed by S&P Global. The survey is monthly and is normally published on the first business day of the month, before the market open in mainland China, covering the previous month’s activity.

Dates can shift when they clash with mainland public holidays, in particular Lunar New Year in late January or February and the National Day holiday in early October, so check the S&P Global calendar in the days before a release. Dates are also occasionally added or amended by the publisher after this schedule is issued.

What is the Caixin Manufacturing PMI?

PMI stands for Purchasing Managers’ Index. It is a diffusion index: a survey asks the people who buy raw materials and components for factories whether output, new orders, employment, supplier delivery times and stocks of purchases are better, the same, or worse than the month before. The answers are combined into a single headline number. A reading of exactly 50 means no change on the previous month, above 50 means the majority of firms report improvement, and below 50 means the majority report deterioration. The distance from 50 indicates how broad the change is, not how large it is in percentage terms.

The survey covers roughly 500 to 650 manufacturers across China and is weighted towards smaller, privately owned and export-facing companies. That is the key difference from the official manufacturing PMI published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which surveys around 3,000 firms and leans more heavily towards large and state-owned enterprises. The two indices frequently move in different directions in the same month. That is not an error: they are measuring overlapping but different slices of Chinese industry. Investors often read the private survey as the better guide to the health of small and medium sized exporters, and the official survey as the better guide to the parts of the economy that state policy reaches first.

One naming point causes regular confusion. S&P Global has always compiled the survey, but the sponsor holding the naming rights changed. Caixin Media ended its sponsorship in July 2025 and RatingDog, a Shenzhen based information technology and credit research firm, took over the naming rights from the August 2025 release, according to reporting by investingLive and other market commentary. The index is therefore now published as the RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI, while many calendars, brokers and news desks still call it the Caixin PMI. The methodology, sample and history are continuous, so the series can be compared over time.

Alongside the manufacturing index, S&P Global publishes a services PMI for China a few days later and a composite index that blends the two. Together they give a monthly read on demand, pricing and hiring across the Chinese economy.

How is it calculated?

Purchasing executives complete a questionnaire in the second half of the reference month. Each question is answered on a three way scale: higher, unchanged, or lower. For each sub-index, S&P Global takes the percentage reporting an improvement, adds half the percentage reporting no change, and produces an index between 0 and 100. The headline manufacturing PMI is a weighted average of five sub-indices: new orders (30%), output (25%), employment (20%), suppliers’ delivery times (15%) and stocks of purchases (10%). Delivery times are inverted so that slower deliveries, a sign of strain in supply chains and usually of strong demand, push the index up rather than down.

Responses are weighted by the contribution of each sector to Chinese manufacturing output, and the results are seasonally adjusted so that predictable patterns, such as the Lunar New Year shutdown, do not distort the trend. Headline PMI data are not revised once published, which is one reason markets pay attention to them: unlike GDP or industrial production, the first print is the final print. Seasonal adjustment factors are recalculated periodically, which can nudge the historical path of the series slightly.

Experienced readers look past the headline. The new export orders sub-index is the cleanest monthly signal on global demand for Chinese goods and on the effect of tariffs. The employment sub-index shows whether factories are hiring or shedding workers. The input prices and output prices sub-indices show whether cost pressure is being passed on, which feeds into the deflation debate around China and into the prices that importers in Europe and the United States eventually pay. The accompanying commentary from S&P Global economists often explains a move better than the number itself.

What time is it released and where?

The release time is 9:45 am China Standard Time, 15 minutes before the mainland equity market opens at 9:30 am plus the pre-open auction window, and shortly before the Hong Kong open. For the September 1, 2026 release that is:

• Beijing and Hong Kong: 9:45 am CST, September 1, 2026
• London: 2:45 am, September 1, 2026
• New York: 9:45 pm ET, August 31, 2026
• Sydney: 11:45 am AEST, September 1, 2026

Because China does not use daylight saving time but the United Kingdom and the United States do, the London and New York equivalents shift by an hour twice a year: the release is 1:45 am in London and 8:45 pm ET during the northern winter. The data are published under embargo to accredited media, then made available on the S&P Global PMI website and through the sponsor’s own channels. Release dates and times are confirmed in advance on the S&P Global PMI release calendar. The official manufacturing PMI from the National Bureau of Statistics is normally published the day before, at 9:30 am CST, so the two prints usually arrive within 24 hours of each other and are read together.

Historical data

The table below shows recent readings for the private sector manufacturing survey, with the consensus expectation where one was published. Figures are reported against the month the survey covers, not the day of release.

Sources: release history compiled by FX Blue from S&P Global data, and TrendForce DataTrack for the March 2026 reading. The full official archive, including every sub-index, is available from S&P Global Market Intelligence. For context on the government’s parallel survey, the National Bureau of Statistics reported an official manufacturing PMI of 49.2% for July 2026, down 1.1 percentage points on June, with small enterprises weakest at 47.4%.

Two features of the recent record are worth holding on to. First, the private survey has hovered close to the 50 line, so small moves flip the story between mild expansion and mild contraction. Second, the private and official surveys have diverged repeatedly, with the private index sitting above 50 in months when the official index was below it. When they move in the same direction, as they did in the July 2026 data, analysts treat the signal as more reliable.

How do markets react?

The reaction is fastest in Asian trading hours, because the release lands minutes before the mainland and Hong Kong equity markets open. A reading meaningfully above expectations tends to support the CSI 300 and the Hang Seng, lift the offshore renminbi, and push up the currencies and equity markets most exposed to Chinese demand: the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar and, to a lesser extent, the Korean won. A weak reading does the opposite and often revives expectations of stimulus from Beijing, which can paradoxically support Chinese equities in sectors that benefit from state support, such as construction and property related shares.

The second channel is commodities. China is the largest buyer of iron ore, copper and a long list of industrial inputs, so a soft manufacturing PMI weighs on those prices and on the miners listed in London, Sydney and Toronto. That is why the release matters to a UK investor with an index tracker: mining and energy groups are a large slice of the FTSE 100, and Chinese demand is a large part of their earnings. In Europe, German carmakers, luxury groups and industrial machinery names are the most China sensitive; the DAX and the CAC 40 often trade off Chinese data on the day it is published.

The third channel is inflation. The input and output price sub-indices are an early read on whether Chinese factory gate prices are rising or falling. Falling Chinese export prices mean cheaper imported goods for the United States, the United Kingdom and the euro area, which feeds through to consumer price inflation and, eventually, to central bank thinking. That link is one reason traders watching the US CPI report also keep an eye on Chinese PMIs.

Two caveats. The market impact is usually classed as medium rather than high, because the number is a survey rather than a hard count and because the official PMI has often been released a day earlier, taking the surprise out of it. And because the print arrives overnight for European and American investors, the move is frequently absorbed before those markets open, appearing as a gap in futures rather than as an intraday swing.

What It Means for Your Money

You will not see the Chinese manufacturing PMI on your bank statement, but it reaches your finances through several ordinary routes.

• Prices in the shops. China makes a large share of the world’s consumer goods. When Chinese factories are cutting prices to win orders, imported electronics, clothing, furniture and toys get cheaper over time, which takes a little pressure off inflation in the United Kingdom, the euro area and the United States.
• Mortgages and savings rates. Central banks set interest rates on the outlook for inflation and growth. Persistent weakness in Chinese manufacturing is mildly disinflationary for the rest of the world, which at the margin makes rate cuts easier and eventually feeds into mortgage pricing and the return on savings accounts. This is an indirect and slow channel, not a same day effect.
• Pensions and investments. If you hold a global tracker, a FTSE 100 fund or an emerging markets fund, you own Chinese demand whether you intended to or not, through miners, energy majors, luxury groups, carmakers, chipmakers and shipping. A run of weak PMIs tends to drag on those sectors; a run of strong ones supports them.
• Jobs. Exporters in Germany, Japan, Korea and Australia sell machinery, components and raw materials into Chinese factories. Sustained contraction in Chinese manufacturing shows up in orders, then in hiring, in those supply chains.
• Currencies. Chinese data move the Australian dollar quickly and the pound and euro more modestly. If you are buying foreign currency for a holiday or a property purchase, a big surprise can shift rates by a fraction of a per cent overnight. Over months, a weaker Chinese growth outlook usually supports the dollar as a haven.
• Energy bills. China is the largest importer of crude oil and a major buyer of liquefied natural gas. Weak factory activity softens demand for both, which over time affects wholesale energy prices and therefore household bills.

For most people the sensible response to any single monthly PMI is none at all. It is a temperature check on one economy, published 12 times a year and never revised, best read as part of a trend rather than as a trigger for changing a long term plan.

Related economic events

• US CPI Report: monthly American inflation data, the release most likely to move global interest rate expectations.
• US Jobs Report: monthly payrolls and unemployment, the key gauge of the world’s largest labour market.
• US GDP Report: quarterly growth figures, useful for judging whether Chinese exporters face strong or weakening end demand.
• US PCE Report: the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, which reflects among other things the price of imported goods.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the next China Caixin Manufacturing PMI released?

The next release is September 1, 2026 at 9:45 am CST in Beijing, which is 9:45 pm ET on August 31 and 2:45 am in London on September 1. The following release listed by S&P Global is September 30, 2026.

What time is the Caixin PMI published in my time zone?

It is always 9:45 am China Standard Time. That equals 2:45 am in London and 9:45 pm ET the previous evening during British Summer Time, and 1:45 am London and 8:45 pm ET in the northern winter, because China does not observe daylight saving time.

How often is the survey published?

Monthly, normally on the first business day of the month, covering the previous month’s activity. Dates can move around mainland Chinese public holidays.

Where can I find the official release?

S&P Global Market Intelligence compiles and publishes the survey, with confirmed dates on its PMI release calendar. The index now carries the RatingDog name after Caixin ended its sponsorship in July 2025, although many calendars still use the Caixin label.

Does the Caixin PMI affect interest rates?

Not directly, and not in China’s case through a policy committee vote. It informs the People’s Bank of China’s judgement on stimulus, and it feeds indirectly into Western rate expectations through commodity prices and the cost of imported goods. Its immediate market effect is on Asian equities, the renminbi and commodity linked currencies.