Why hasn't fiscal policy demonstrated a "counter-cyclical" effect?

On May 20th, the Ministry of Finance announced the fiscal revenue and expenditure situation from January to April 2026.
From January to April, the national general public budget revenue was 83.404 trillion yuan; the national general public budget expenditure was 94.809 trillion yuan; an increase of 1.3% year-on-year.

In April, the broad fiscal revenue and expenditure continued the "divergence" trend of revenue stabilization and expenditure slowdown, without showing an "counter-cyclical" pattern.
In April, broad fiscal revenue increased by 2% year-on-year, while broad expenditure fell back to -7.3% year-on-year.
April's fiscal expenditure continued to slow down, directly confirming in macro data the significant cooling of infrastructure investment (which fell by 12.5 percentage points to -5.9% year-on-year in the same month).
Combined with the weakening of core economic indicators such as retail sales, employment growth, and investment in April, the macro economy shows certain structural "stagflation" characteristics, and fiscal policy in the second quarter may face a complex external environment and the need to stabilize growth.

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