Li reviews health of economy

A reading below 50 indicates factory activity is contracting.

Zhu Haibin, chief economist for China at JP Morgan, said activity in November may have been adversely affected by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing. Many factories around the capital were closed to reduce air pollution during the talks.

Qu Hongbin, chief economist for China and the joint head of Asian economic research at HSBC, said he is concerned that the lower figure reflects increasing deflationary pressures that may reduce employment in the future.

"Weak price pressures and low capacity utilization point to insufficient demand in the economy," he said.

Qu believes the pace of economic growth may continue to slow in the coming months because of uncertainties in the housing market and on the exports front.

"More monetary and fiscal easing measures should be deployed," he said.

Global commodity prices, especially those of oil and rice, are continuing to fall, and as a result, inflationary pressures in China and many other Asian countries are easing.

Cutting interest rates may be the preferred option for central banks in the region to stimulate growth and ease the high debt burden, according to experts.

The State Council announced a set of measures to tackle the problem of high financing costs on Wednesday, but made no reference to fine-tuning monetary policy.

Zhu said, "If the new framework fails to bring down funding costs, the government is likely to reassess the monetary policy framework, and rate cuts could be on the table in the first quarter of 2015."