I don’t know what to make of the Chinese economy these days, which puts me in good company: Nobody else knows what to make of it either.

On Monday, the PBoC injected a net CNY289 billion via MLF (the rate was unchanged) in another bid to keep liquidity ample and bolster growth at a time when the specter of a property market meltdown continues to weigh on sentiment and domestic demand still looks anemic. It was the largest monthly cash infusion in nearly three years.

Evergrande was back above the fold last month, and there was a small run on a city commercial bank in Hebei province last week tied to rumors that it had sizable exposure to China’s fallen property behemoth. The bank said it had no liquidity issues. According to Chinese media, “many people” were arrested by local police in connection with the innuendo, which spread online.

The steady drumbeat of dour economic news died down a bit recently, but CPI data released last week suggested deflation risk still haunts the world’s second-largest economy.

Consumer price growth was… well, nothing. CPI was flat for September, the figures showed. Producer prices spent another month in deflation.

If you’ve lost track of how many different half-measures the Party has employed this year as part of what still counts as a hopelessly piecemeal approach to putting a floor under growth, you won’t be blamed. As one ANZ strategist noted, “The government has announced hundreds of counter-cyclical measures to boost domestic demand.” Casual observers likely can’t name a single one of those “hundreds” of support measures, which says a lot.

As ever, there are rumblings that something bigger is the works. The government is reportedly considering a new plunge protection scheme to support the equity market. The CSRC, among other entities, has “a preliminary plan” to source “hundreds of billions of yuan” for a state-backed, stock-buying fund, Bloomberg said. Such a scheme would be smaller in scale than the infamous “National Team” intervention in 2015, when the state embarked on a cartoonish crusade to rescue local equities after a margin-fueled bubble imploded in spectacular fashion.

China’s SWF bought $65 million worth of shares in the country’s biggest lenders last week. The purchase was aimed at shoring up confidence more than mechanically supporting the market — $65 million is a meaningless sum. A-shares have languished in 2023. The benchmark can’t even see its early-2021 levels from where it trades currently.

Regular readers will kindly note that I consistently warned against catching that falling knife. Chinese equities, I insisted, were likely to be a black hole for the foreseeable future given Xi Jinping’s demonstrable totalitarian turn.

I never wavered on that. I was adamant following the Party congress a year ago, for example, that any rebound in Mainland or Hong Kong shares would prove fleeting. I’m not congratulating myself: You didn’t have to be a seer to suggest investors might become increasingly disillusioned with a market beholden to the ghost of Mao.

In any case, the latest trade figures showed China’s export slump continued to moderate last month, but even there, it’s touch and go. Shipments abroad still fell 6.2%.

Imports dropped by the same amount, a testament to lackluster domestic demand. It was the seventh import contraction in a row.

This is the unfortunate backdrop for crucial activity figures and GDP data due out of Beijing this week. It’s starting to feel like the Chinese economy is a lost cause, akin to the local equity market. I don’t mean to suggest officials won’t figure out a way to meet this year’s growth target (or figure out a way to say they did, at least) or even to suggest China won’t continue to be the key swing factor for the global economy. Rather, it feels like Beijing is either out of ideas or else simply not interested in engineering the kind of robust recovery with the potential to get animal spirits stirring again both at home and abroad. I’m not sure which of those possibilities is worse.

Apparently, the Party is considering an additional CNY1 trillion in debt issuance with the proceeds earmarked for infrastructure. That’d drive the deficit through the 3% ceiling, but it might at least telegraph some conviction when it comes to moving the proverbial needle.

This all comes as the US continues to tighten the noose around the country’s tech sector. The White House is reportedly set to impose even more stringent restrictions on Beijing’s access to semiconductors. The new rules, which haven’t been made public, would “close loopholes” from measures announced a year ago, Bloomberg said. Geopolitical frictions are another headwind for China’s economy, and tension between Washington and Beijing could complicate the situation in the Mideast.

Whatever the case, it’s clear by now that the world can’t count on China. Not to save the global economy and probably not for much else either.