China’s economy likely showed renewed signs of weakness in July after a brief pick-up in June, Reuters polls showed, reinforcing expectations that Beijing will need to roll out more policy support to meet its full-year growth target. Panic selling in the country’s stock markets early in the month also likely chilled consumer and business confidence, though unprecedented government support measures appear to have stemmed the rout for now. A raft of data this weekend and next week is expected to show domestic and export demand remained sluggish, weighing on factory activity, while new loans could fall sharply, possibly as Beijing pressed banks to support the stock market. “The real economy, though stabilizing at a low level, is still struggling to turn around,” said Tao Wang, an economist at UBS in Hong Kong, adding that she expected the central bank to cut interest rates again toward the end of September. China’s exports were seen dropping 1.0 percent in July compared with a year earlier, after growing 2.8 percent in June, a median forecast of 31 analysts polled by Reuters showed. Unexpected growth in June had fueled hopes that global demand was finally improving, but official and private factory surveys in recent days have shown export orders shrank in July, pointing to more weakness in coming months. Dragged in part by a tumble in global commodity prices, imports were seen shrinking for the ninth straight month, slipping 8.0 percent in July from a year earlier. Imports had tumbled 6.1 percent in June. Reflecting sluggish economic activity, producer prices were estimated to have slid 5 percent in July from a year earlier, the biggest drop since the global financial crisis. Consumer inflation also likely stayed muted, running at 1.5 percent on a yearly basis, compared with June’s 1.4 percent. A cooling housing market, uneven exports and lackluster investment growth have weighed on China this year, with economic growth expected to cool from 7.4 percent in 2014 to 7 percent in 2015, the slowest in a quarter of a century. The shakeout in China's stock markets in June and July that wiped out a quarter of share prices has added a new sense of urgency for top officials as they try to contain any fallout for the economy and the financial system. Acknowledging the challenges ahead, the Politburo, an elite decision-making body of the Communist Party, restated in July that the government would push through targeted measures to foster economic growth. LUKEWARM DEMAND Factory output was forecast to have grown 6.6 percent last month from a year earlier, slipping from June's 6.8 percent. A private activity survey last week showed activity at smaller factories shrank the most in two years, while an official survey showed growth had stalled. Some market watchers fear companies had been investing in the stock market as orders sagged and profit margins shrank. Annual retail sales growth was seen unchanged at 10.6 percent, despite some automakers' reports this week of sharply lower sales. Fixed-asset investment, one of the major drivers of the Chinese economy, was estimated to have risen 11.5 percent in the first seven months of the year, up a shade from the 11.4 percent gain seen between January and June. And despite China's easy monetary policy, which authorities have loosened at the most aggressive pace in almost seven years, new loans were estimated to have nearly halved in July after a lending surge the previous month. The fall-off in loans may be partly seasonal as Chinese banks often conduct 60 percent of the year's lending in the first six months of the year. Banks are forecast to have made 738 billion yuan ($118.9 billion) worth of new loans in July, down from June's 1.28 trillion yuan. Commercial bank lending in China is partly controlled by the central bank as a way of setting policy. "While the stock market fallout will not result in a financial crisis in China according to our assessment, banks may reduce their lending to the real economy because they are asked to support the securities market," economists at ANZ said. The broad measure of M2 money supply was seen to have grown 11.7 percent in July from a year ago, down a touch from June's 11.8 percent, but within sight of the government's targeted 12 percent increase for the year.