China's economic planning agency has outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy but refrained from major spending initiatives.
The piecemeal nature of the plans announced on Tuesday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and Shanghai's benchmark gave up a 10 per cent initial gain as markets reopened after a week-long holiday to trade just three per cent higher.
The head of the National Development and Reform Commission said the government would front-load 100 billion yuan ($A21 billion) in spending from the government's budget for 2025 in addition to another 100 billion yuan for construction projects.
The scale of spending overall was well below the multitrillion-yuan levels that analysts said might be expected.
The NDRC's chairman, Zheng Shanjie, said China was still on track to attain its full-year economic growth target of about five per cent.
But he acknowledged the economy faced difficulties and an increasingly "more complex and extreme" global environment.
China's leaders have been struggling to rev up growth since the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
A downturn in the property market has deepened that challenge, as consumer spending has lagged and global demand also has slowed.
In a note, UBS chief China economist Tao Wang said that the market was "likely expecting a significant fiscal stimulus".
A modest package of 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion yuan was more reasonable to expect in the near term, she said, with another two trillion to three trillion yuan in 2025.
In September, China unveiled a monetary stimulus package including cuts to mortgage rates and in the amount of reserves are required to keep on deposit with the central bank.
Those and other measures were the most aggressive efforts so far to try to pull the property industry out of the doldrums and spur faster growth.
On Tuesday, the NDRC said new measures would focus on boosting investment and spending and supporting small and medium-sized businesses that operate at a disadvantage to large, state-corporations.
To counter falling housing sales and home prices, Zheng said there would be "comprehensive policy measures to help stop the decline in the real estate market".
"In response to volatility and declines in the stock market, we will introduce a series of powerful and effective measures to strive to boost the capital market," he said, without giving details.