China's manufacturing contracted for a second month in June, an official factory survey showed on Sunday, keeping alive calls for further stimulus after a string of recent indicators showed the economy struggling to get back on its feet. The official purchasing managers' index (PMI), at 49.5 in June, was unchanged in May, below the 50-mark separating growth from contraction and in line with a median forecast of 49.5 in a Reuters poll. The PMI, a sentiment-based indicator, tends to paint a gloomier picture of the world's second-biggest economy than hard data. However, disappointing May industrial output numbers ... (full story)