Economy

That would be the possibility of concerning market distortions I mentioned earlier. They could totally be neck deep in pyramid building schemes or running unprofitable factories at a loss just to keep production up. This should still be putting inflationary pressure on the market, as material and labor markets should be heating up, but other factors might be pushing aggregate inflation down. For example, they might be building many billions of dollars worth of new condos while housing prices fall. Material and labor prices might be rising, but declining housing costs are pushing inflation into negative rates despite that. A free market economy would reduce construction in that case and the economy might slide into a recession while housing prices stabilize, but China could order SOEs and even private companies to keep building anyway. This would keep GDP growing, but would have other long and short term consequences.