Bloomberg’s take on Chinese data problems

You can read it here (pdf), via Tom Orlik, here is the excerpt which most strongly confirms my prior point of view:

The Caixin services PMI is barely in expansionary territory. A new index of restaurant revenue from Union-Pay Advisors contracted 7.9 percent year on year in August – a drop that reflects more than belt tightening by bureaucrats.

I should note that the overall stance of the piece is more nuanced than that single excerpt would indicate.