If authorities in Beijing weren’t already under enough pressure to revive domestic demand, Xi’s statisticians on Sunday braved another lackluster read on consumer price growth.

I say “braved.” The implication, obviously, is that the NBS would rather deliver good news, lest the big man should shoot the messenger, figuratively or literally. Some of that’s just gallows humor. I don’t actually believe Xi’s so far gone as to resort to threats of physical violence against bureaucratic number crunchers whose fault China’s problems most assuredly aren’t. But one does wonder about the tenor of the discussion given how often the numbers underscore outsiders’ concerns about the country’s economic trajectory.

In any event, consumer prices rose just 0.4% last month, according to Sunday’s update. That would’ve been bad enough on its own considering the deflation worries hanging over the discourse, but when you drill down, it looks as though the headline would’ve printed in negative territory were it not for a near 23% jump in fresh produce attributable to extreme weather and, I imagine, some Golden Week distortions.

Core inflation ran a mere 0.1% in September, the slowest in nearly three years. The figure above gives you a sense of how entrenched this really is.

To state what I hope’s obvious: You can’t, as a country with 1.4 billion people marking an epochal transition to a consumption-based economic model, succumb to a deflationary psychology. That’s a death knell.

Producer prices fell 2.8% in September, Sunday’s data showed. It’s official now: China’s spent two full years in PPI deflation. September was month 24.

The data was released a day on from what was supposed to be a pivotal policy briefing from the finance ministry. Suffice to say the event garnered mixed reviews.

Hao Hong, a widely-followed strategist, tried to spin it. “Overall, [the] presser [was] steady as she goes,” he said, adding that finance chief Lan Fo’an “avoid[ed] being tied up by a specific, but completely meaningless, number set up by social media.”

According to Hao, then, Lan’s refusal to commit to a headline stimulus number, or a time frame for that matter, was by design. “Strategery,” as it were. “It’s a job well done in a demanding market,” Hao assessed.