China’s official manufacturing PMI slipped to just 49 in February, the worst monthly level since February 2009. It has been below 50 each of the past seven months (and increasingly so during that time) and less than 50.3 since November 2014, an incredible span of 15 straight months. The trend is inarguable, as even economists will now admit Chinese industry stands for pain. Instead, debate has shifted toward the more optimistic “consumer economy” which sounds much less devastating and mystifying.

To that end, there is only further disappointment in February as the non-manufacturing PMI declined to 52.7, also the lowest reading since early 2009 (and equivalent to October 2008 on the way down). While the focus will become the individual reading as it remains above 50, that is, as usual, a misreading of PMI’s; what matters is the trend and, in this case, the non-manufacturing trend in relation to manufacturing. The “services” economy seems very much to follow the manufacturing trend; which only makes sense.

If services were in process of supplanting industry you would expect at least very little correlation if not inverse. Instead, both are clearly moving in the same direction and, quite ominously, on the same general slope (time). Through it all, the idea of “stimulus” survives.

Still, the services gauge slipped to 52.7 in February, from 53.5 in January. Measures of new orders, selling prices, employment, backlogs and inventories were below the 50 dividing line between improving and worsening conditions.

A separate manufacturing reading from Caixin Media and Markit Economics fell to 48 in February, from 48.4 in January.

“Early signs suggest stimulus has yet to gain significant traction, pointing to the need for continued and expanded policy support,” Bloomberg News economists Tom Orlik and Fielding Chen wrote in a note. “In the near term, that likely means the announcement of a larger fiscal deficit target at the National People’s Congress on Saturday, plus stealth moves to guide lending rates lower.”