Breakingviews

Diaper and dairy stocks jumped on news all couples will be allowed to have two children. Though the birth rate may inch up it won’t have much impact on China’s ageing population and shrinking workforce. Beijing will find it harder to rally urban mothers than to restrict them.

Dubious about official data, investors are scouring corporate results for clues about shoppers’ confidence. Yet iPhone sales, e-commerce transactions and demand for fried chicken offer few clues. There are no consistently reliable proxies for the world’s second-largest economy.

Almost a quarter of sales – and two-thirds of revenue growth – came from China. Apple’s new iPhone installment plan could bump this up even further. Chief Executive Tim Cook’s bet on the Middle Kingdom is yielding impressive dividends, but carries existential political risks.

The $3.4 bln tie-up between rival travel sites Ctrip and Qunar heralds a strategic ceasefire in increasingly costly discount battles. Yet the share swap with Qunar parent Baidu falls short of a full merger. Shareholders can only guess the value created from the tangled alliance.

Economists and trade partners have long pushed for greater liberalisation. As the ruling party debates its new five-year plan, market forces may come to the fore again. Yet even a small devaluation spooked investors. If reforms do arrive, they will make China even more uncertain.

China and France’s EDF are nearing an 18 billion pound N-plant deal at Hinkley. Long horizons make the economics hard to judge, but at current prices Britain is on the hook for 1 billion pounds a year in implied subsidies. The price of Chinese support is fiendish complexity.

Moviegoers are a rare bright spot in a slowing economy: ticket sales are on track to hit $6.4 bln this year, up more than 36 percent on 2014. But heavy discounts from cinemas and online sites are inflating sales. Growth may not be as stellar as it appears.

The KFC parent will hive off its troubled China business into a separate traded company - as suggested by activist Corvex. It’s logical: the two parts are effectively separate already. The catch is that the U.S. unit will still share Chinese growth risks, but without the control.

President Xi’s red-carpet reception shows Britain is hungry for Chinese investment and wants a counterweight in tense dealings with Brussels. The catch is that Chinese investment is hard to pin down and the UK has almost no leverage. Europe is the more important relationship.

The country’s Q3 GDP grew at 6.9 pct, its slowest rate in six years. Yet the real state of China’s economy has become unreadable. Market signals suggest a worrying new truth: the country’s leaders are doing no better than might be hoped from a group of clever but fallible humans.