China’s manufacturing activity has contracted after a few months of rising production, fuelling speculation that the recovery from COVID-zero will be tougher than expected.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.2 from 51.9 in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

This was the first month-to-month fall in manufacturing since December.

The drop is “due to factors including insufficient market demand and the high base in the first quarter when the manufacturing industry rapidly recovered”, NBS senior statistician Zhao Qinghe said in the results report.

The report “suggests that China’s post-COVID recovery has somewhat lost steam and calls for continued policy support,” said Zhou Hao, chief economist at Guotai Junan International.

During the March quarter, consumer spending drove Chinese’s quickest economic expansion in over a year, as lockdown restrictions were lifted.

This manufacturing drop is a sign that the world’s second-largest economy isn’t going to be stable anytime soon.

The drop in demand for tech products, coupled with a move out of China by many major tech giants looking to reduce its reliance on the country’s factories, means this won’t be a steady recovery.