An easing of home price deflation and the decline in narrow money growth keep alive an upside scenario where individual investors buy into the idea that policy is putting a floor under growth. But the continued fall in property sales and weakening of credit dhow any turnaround is tentative at best.

Three things stand out from the CEWC: talk of "insufficient demand"; specific policies for consumption like welfare spending; and urgency towards real estate. The overall message is encouraging, though welfare spending is unlikely to rise much given it wasn't included in the November fiscal package.

A "moderately loose" stance seems encouraging. But effecting that isn't straightforward, given nominal rates and the RRR are now so low. Rather than nominal, policy needs to work on price. That can be done by PBC BS expansion that addresses property inventories, or fiscal policy that raises demand.

After falling for most of the year, core CPI rose MoM in November. However, the impact on overall CPI was offset by a renewed softening of food prices, and PPI also remained in deflation. PPI will likely strengthen a bit more from here, but overall, deflation is still the bigger risk than inflation.

As a long-time fan, I was very pleased to have a piece in the latest China Leadership Monitor. It argues that while cyclically, spending hasn't been so bad, that isn't enough given the property bust. Even so, and despite interesting proposals from onshore economists, policy support is still lacking.

In November, the manufacturing PMI ticked up again, but the construction PMI continued to fall. But it would be optimistic to think this shows industry becoming less dependent on real estate when prices rolled over, the services PMI remains very weak, and employment continues to fall.

A chart-heavy note updating China's trade trends. Export volume growth remains strong; prices are soft but not falling sharply; EV growth is sluggish but solar stronger; direct trade continues to reorient towards EM; the growing trade surplus helps GDP growth, but not relations with the US.

A few weeks ago, we laid out a list of indicators to be watching to track whether all the policy announcements from China were generating a turn in the cycle. Looking through that list now, and it remains difficult to feel excited that they have.

With a bounce in reported retail sales, it looks like economic growth in October got back to the government's 5% growth target. Overall, though, the tone of the data was rather mixed, with real estate activity in particular still extremely weak.