It’s almost as if investors have determined that China’s a giant Potemkin village — that the macro data produced by Beijing’s statisticians isn’t worth much and that Xi Jinping’s promises are worth even less.

Mainland Chinese equities managed only pedestrian gains on Monday when onshore trading resumed following the week-long holiday. If you get the Daily, you read my brief recap of the situation on Sunday evening. Official data suggested travel and spending during eight days of Lunar New Year festivities was strong, even compared to pre-pandemic levels. That was supposed to bolster local equities which were anyway due for a catch up rally: Hong Kong shares rose sharply during the three days they were open last week.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Analysts saw straight through what some banks described as mediocre data. As it turns out, tourist receipts actually fell double digits compared to 2019 when measured on a per capita basis.

This isn’t especially complicated, which is what makes it funny that mainstream financial media outlets were so quick to parrot the Party’s talking points over the weekend. (Only to turn around Monday and implicitly deride the very same data.) If 75 people travel and each person spends 60, that’s 4,500. If 100 people travel and each person spends 50, that’s 5,000. Is the latter outcome “better”? I don’t know. Maybe. But it suggests travelers are perhaps budget-constrained or otherwise more cautious than they used to be, which is the opposite of what you want if you’re battling to stay out of deflation.

“On an aggregate level, the number of tourists was up 19% versus 2019, while tourism spending was up 7.7%,” SocGen’s Wei Yao and Michelle Lam remarked. The implication: Spending per tourist was down 11% (and then some) versus pre-pandemic levels.

“That seems to suggest consumers remain cautious due to [the] housing downturn and lackluster stock market performance,” SocGen’s China team went on.

I won’t pretend to have conducted any sort of deep-dive into the numbers, but suffice to say people who did came away unimpressed, if not entirely pessimistic. The word “caution” was pervasive and adjectives like “ongoing” and “prolonged” still accompanied the noun “downturn” and various synonyms.

Investors got the message. The onshore benchmark rose just 1.2% and getting to that reportedly required ETF-buying by state funds late in the session. Turnover’s cartoonish in a handful of products associated with Beijing’s support efforts, which now include funds tracking mid-sized and small firms. Recall that Chinese small-caps were in a veritable death spiral earlier this year.

Foreign investors, on the other hand, were sellers Monday to the tune of more than 6 billion yuan, or around 835 million in real money. There’s a joke there. Don’t miss it.

Li Qiang presided over a State Council meeting on Sunday. I don’t have to write any jokes to make it funny. They write themselves.

“The Spring Festival holiday has passed. All departments must quickly get to work,” Li told the gathering of joyless functionaries. “We must seize the day and night and transform the sense of ‘always worrying’ into the power of ‘knowing everything.'”

The quotes are from Xinhua’s account of the proceedings. The Party, Li emphasized, needs to “do more things to boost confidence and expectations.”