Signs of Recovery, Or Just an Inventory Correction?

I certainly hope these “Faint Signs of Uptick in China Trade” amount to something. But I’m afraid it may just be an inventory correction. When demand falls, that winds up leading to excess inventory as wholesalers and retailers find themselves having ordered more goods than they can sell. That leads to a collapse in new factory orders. Then as long as retail demand hasn’t gone to zero, eventually the inventory winds down and factory orders tick up again. But you don’t really get to recovery until demand gets back up to where it was before the crash. And by then, the population’s grown, so unemployment continues to be higher than its pre-crash level.