China's services firms regained some growth momentum in July, recovering from June's 10-month low, a private-sector survey showed on Friday.
The China HSBC services purchasing managers index (PMI) rose to 53.1 in July from 52.3 in June, reflecting a rise in new orders even as sales prices and costs remained broadly unchanged.
Earlier Friday, the official services PMI published by the National Bureau of Statistics showed the services industry slowing somewhat, to 55.6 in July from 56.7 in June, reflecting a slowdown in new orders and business activity sub-indexes.
"Despite the uptick in the headline index, the rate of activity growth was again lower than the long-run trend for the survey," wrote Markit Economics, which compiles the survey for HSBC.
The services sector index follows two PMI surveys of China's vast manufacturing industry that showed smaller, private firms beginning to stabilise while larger, state-owned enterprises faced continuing pressure from unsold inventories and slowing economic growth.
"The modest gain in July's HSBC services and manufacturing PMIs implies that the slowdown of the Chinese economy is likely to have stabilised," wrote Hongbin Qu, chief economist for China at HSBC.