Chinese economic activity picked up in March, according to… well, according to China’s statisticians.

Can you sense the implicit derision? I hope so. I also hope I’ll be forgiven: I employ the very same mocking cadence when it comes to the tabulation of macro statistics in the West. I’m an equal-opportunity skeptic when it comes to the reliability of data purporting to say anything meaningful about very large economies.

But China’s a special case, where that means it’s a former totalitarian nightmare working very hard to roll back decades of progress on the way to reclaiming its glorious mid-20th century status as an insular communist dictatorship laboring under iron-fisted, one-man rule.

Xi Jinping’s pretensions to “opening up” aside, the Party’s becoming more of a black box by the month as Xi retreats into what some scholars and experts have described as “emperor mode.” Last week in Beijing, he lectured a select group of American business luminaries on the history of Sino-US relations in what, to my mind anyway, was just as much a propaganda stunt as it was a pitch for foreign investment.

All that to say I doubt there’s much to glean these days from China’s monthly data releases. As one reader pointed out last week, the trade figures are meaningful (trade involves two parties, and assuming the other isn’t complicit, you can only fabricate one side of the exchange) but the rest of it’s more useful as a barometer of what the Party wants to say about its economy than what’s actually going on.

Obviously (and I learned last year that this doesn’t necessary go without saying), I’m not suggesting that all economic data out of China’s completely fabricated. That’d be ridiculous. You can go to the NBS’s website and peruse the figures behind the aggregates that make headlines. Presumably it all adds up. The Party has an army of serious statisticians who’re good at their jobs. And on and on.

Plus, the data hasn’t exactly painted a rosy picture lately, particularly on the CPI front, so they’re not trying that hard to hide their problems. All I’m saying is “consider the source,” as the saying goes. The source here is a communist dictatorship. (It is what it is.)

Having thoroughly buried the lede (as I’m wont to do), the official PMI data for March showed China’s manufacturing sector returned to expansion for the first time in six months. The NBS gauge printed 50.8 in figures released on Sunday. That was ahead of consensus.

Both the non-manufacturing gauge and the underlying services index rose to their best levels since June.

Ostensibly, this supports the notion that the world’s second-largest economy found its footing early this year. And that the Party’s 2024 growth target might not be so unrealistic after all. It also suggests the urgency of providing more stimulus has perhaps abated.

Or at least that’s the standard narrative. I’m just paraphrasing what every overpaid analyst around the world will write today and tomorrow while summarizing needlessly laborious PMI deep-dives.

My own view is that without meaningful fiscal stimulus and some kind of brake on Xi’s full-throttle authoritarianism, China’s future looks considerably less bright than it did just five years ago.