Bloomberg
Chinese consumers, whose spending helped underpin the first-half expansion this year, may not be able to deliver a repeat performance in the second as income growth slows. A gauge of sales growth for low-end consumer goods such as soft drinks and shampoo fell to a five-year low of 3.5 percent last year, according to a report by Kantar Worldpanel and Bain & Company. While high-end products are doing better, cheap staples such as instant noodles and beer suffered declines.