China’s Credit-Based Stability Seen as Leaders Head to Beach

China’s top leaders are gathering for their annual conclave at the Beidaihe beach resort having defied the doomsayers once more. Economic data in coming days are projected to confirm the stabilization in growth achieved in the first half of this year continued into July. The backdrop of calm has won China a sustained respite from the financial-market turmoil and capital outflows that accompanied the Communist leadership’s traditional beach-resort meeting last year. But the stability has come at a cost. Instead of delivering on what Premier Li Keqiang called reforms so tough they’d be like cutting “flesh,” authorities have relied on another dose of cheap credit to prop things up. That’s added more leverage to a nation where debt is already 2.5 times the economy’s size. Behind the reluctance for a bigger economic shakeup is a desire for stability ahead of a potentially wide-ranging reshuffle of the Communist hierarchy next year, according to Credit Suisse Group AG. “Candidates will prefer to be playing it safe rather than executing substantial reforms — especially state-owned enterprise reforms,” the bank’s China analysts, led by Vincent Chan, wrote last month.