BEIJING — Spooked by a sharply slowing economy, China’s leaders have begun opening the financial spigots to build still more roads and airports and subsidize consumer purchases, reprising measures that enabled the nation to sail mostly unscathed through the last great global recession.

But the leaders are signaling that the latest round of stimulus spending will fall far short of the four trillion renminbi, or $585 billion at the time, that the government poured into the economy in 2008 and 2009. That spurred a torrent of bank lending, part of it for dubious projects that many experts say will wind up having to be written off in coming years.

The government has made no formal announcement of a stimulus program, and an article on Wednesday in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s leading newspaper, quoted leading Chinese economists as suggesting that any efforts to bolster growth are likely to be measured. Markets fell on Wednesday after the article and other news from Beijing indicated that China’s planners remained cautious about engaging in a huge additional stimulus program.

But financial analysts and others say the evidence of a new round of major investments, worth $150 billion or more, is strong. The National Development and Reform Commission, the state body that executes economic strategy, has approved scores of major new infrastructure projects since the start of April, including clean-energy ventures like hydropower stations, four new airports and three renovations or expansions of big steel mills.