Critics of China's economy moan that its investment is excessive and its official statistics flatter its performance.
Is that still correct?
In recent months investment in infrastructure,
manufacturing and construction has been alarmingly weak—so weak, in fact,
that some analysts think the numbers are too bad to be true.
Each month China reports data on investment in "fixed" assets (ie, things other than inventories).
It reports how much has been spent since the beginning of the year
and how that compares with the same period in the previous year.
In the first nine months of 2025, China spent 37.2trn yuan ($5.2trn).
Although that sounds like a lot, it was 0.5% less than a year earlier.
It was also the first time outside of the covid-19 pandemic
that China had reported a negative figure going back more than 30 years.
The fall was not evenly spread over the year.
Nothing was amiss until the summer.
Then spending fell off a cliff.
Official figures imply investment shrank by 6.6% in the third quarter compared with a year earlier.
On the face of it, this is the kind of collapse that China bears have long predicted and the world economy has long feared
China at last reaching the destination on its "treadmill to hell", as one critic put it.
Although investment in property has been declining for years,
up until the summer it was offset by growing investment in other parts of the economy,