China is expected to step up efforts to stimulate its flagging economy after an official survey showed the manufacturing sector expanded at its slowest pace in seven months in June.

The official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 50.2 last month, down from 50.4 in May, the government announced on Sunday, with falling orders and weak exports leading a continuing slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.

The weak PMI reading suggests growth dropped below the symbolic 8 per cent mark in the second quarter after growing at an annual rate of 8.1 per cent in the first. One Chinese government researcher told an academic forum on Sunday that the economy likely grew at around 7.5 or 7.6 per cent in the first half of the year from a year earlier, suggesting a sharp deceleration in the second quarter.