Approximately 25% of China's 120 000 km of expressway, as well as many new metro lines and airports, rest on soft clay deposits. However, service settlements are proving larger than expected, especially in southeast China. This note describes laboratory experiments on K0-consolidated intact samples of soft clay taken near Wenzhou, south-east China, that explore whether cyclic traffic wheel loading contributes significantly to the observed settlement trends. Cyclic triaxial (CT) tests are reported together with cyclic hollow cylinder (CHCA) experiments that imposed cardioid-shaped 2τzθ − (Δσz − Δσθ) stress paths. Cyclic principal stress axis rotation is shown to have an important influence on vertical straining. Once a certain threshold has been exceeded, the resilient and permanent strains developed in the CHCA tests become progressively larger than their counterparts in CT tests conducted at the same vertical cyclic stress ratio, with trends that diverge progressively as vertical cyclic stress ratio increases. Critical cyclic stress ratios can be defined that divide the response into (a) stable, (b) metastable and (c) unstable cyclic ranges. The novel experimental approach and high-quality data reported should aid practitioners and modellers in developing new analyses to address this economically significant geotechnical problem.