It is well known that the electricity output/consumption of China is a good proxy for economic activity. Particularly for people who are skeptical about the Chinese statistics numbers, power output is an alternative gauge.
As always, one should be cautious about reading too much into January and February macro data because the Chinese New Year distorts the picture (and the Chinese New Year came early this year). However, a drop of 7.5% in power output/consumption is huge and cannot be explained by Chinese New Year alone, as the chart below illustrates. The last instance of a drop of comparable magnitude was during the post-Lehman crisis:
