News of another monthly decline in Chinese exports - its biggest fall in four months - and a collapse in producer prices shows how China's faltering industrial demand has hit global trade and sent emerging market assets reeling.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS edged lower and held near a 1-1/2 year low hit last month. It has fallen 16 percent since May.

"The markets are beginning to price in structurally lower growth in China and an end to the so-called commodity super-cycle," said Yoshinori Shigemi, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.

While economists have long predicted a slowdown in the pace of China's economic expansion after years of turbocharged growth, investors have been taken aback by the scale of the slowdown and the impact it has had on emerging markets.