Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio in a Bloomberg interview described China’s situation as “more challenging than Japan in 1990,” with the economy needing a restructuring. Beamis

China’s broad budget expenditure shrank at a faster clip amid an unprecedented drop in income earned by local governments from land sales, an alarming sign for an economy desperately in need of fiscal support.

Despite the challenges, China’s policymakers have seemed unwilling to deploy a stimulus package to jumpstart growth.

A long-running measure of how consumers feel about their finances and the economy has fallen sharply, raising concerns that the government's warning that the Budget will be "painful" has shaken people's confidence.