The WSJ China Journal has since published a revealing post about yesterday’s undue hype in the global financial markets ahead of China’s National People’s Congress.

Wednesday, it was the turn of global equity markets, which rose sharply on vague speculation that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao would announce big new stimulus spending on top of the $585 billion, two-year package Beijing unveiled just four months ago.

That didn’t happen. Instead Mr. Wen on Thursday told delegates to the annual session of China’s legislature that, in effect, the government is confident that its current measures will be enough to keep China’s economy growing. China’s markets were still up today amid continuing hopes, but the increase was modest compared to yesterday’s rally.

Oops. Much of the speculation stemmed from wire reports quoting Li Deshui, the former head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics and an anonymous senior economic planner that more further government spending was ahead. It’s hard to say if the officials were speaking out of turn or were misquoted, but something got garbled.

Skittish investors make easy targets for this sort of thing.