Data Flash is a brief interpretive summary of China’s official monthly economic data release.

Credit growth came in worryingly strong in January, despite the lowest monthly expansion of outstanding bank deposits on record. This development highlights the relative ineffectiveness so far of the PBoC’s efforts to subdue nonbank credit creation (in particular) and suggests that deleveraging will be neither easy nor painless. Beyond the monetary numbers, January’s data releases have been relatively uninspiring, due in part to the fact that the NBS foregoes January releases for many data points in favor of releasing combined January-February data in March to avoid the seasonal distortions caused by the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday.