The Chinese economy’s still on shaky footing.

At this point — which is to say more than two years on from the Shanghai lockdowns and 18 months after Xi Jinping abandoned “COVID zero” for good — I’m not sure it makes sense to talk about a “delayed recovery.”

China’s “reopening bounce” was rescheduled so many times that most macro watchers (including this one) gave up on it. There was no bounce to speak of, and it’s clear by now that China’s domestic demand problem is endemic.

Xi Jinping’s relying on China’s factories to support growth. The juxtaposition between relatively quick industrial output and a moribund domestic consumption impulse has the world worried about a flood of cheap Chinese exports as Xi foists his (engineered) overcapacity problem on everybody else.

You know the narrative: The West’s happy to import some of China’s disinflation, but not all of it. The threat to local producers is a political liability at a time when the center’s collapsing across the democratic world.

With all of that in mind, official PMIs out of Beijing on Sunday showed China’s factory activity contracted for a second consecutive month in June.

The NBS said the economy’s “expanding overall,” but cautioned that the “foundation for a continued recovery” needs to be “consolidated further.” The agency blamed “insufficient effective demand” for the lackluster showing on the factory gauge.

The non-manufacturing PMI slipped to 50.5, below estimates and barely in expansion territory.

China will surely find a way to claim the Party hit its growth target (5%) for 2024, but between i) the threat of more tariffs in the event Donald Trump returns to the White House, ii) Washington’s ongoing efforts to curb China’s access to critical technology, iii) animosity born of Xi’s support for Vladimir Putin’s war machine and iv) the Party’s failure to address the country’s property crisis, the outlook’s dim, if not necessarily grim.

Fortunately, Xi knows just who to call. “Venezuela firmly believes that under the wise leadership of Xi Jinping, China will surely realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Nicolás Maduro said Friday, during an exchange of messages marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

For his part, Xi lauded China’s “iron friendship” with Venezuela which, like Russia, recently cemented an “all-weather strategic partnership” with Beijing. The pact, Xi emphasized, is dedicated to “world peace, development and the promotion of a shared future for all mankind.”