When it comes to confronting economic slowdowns, the Chinese government has not been shy about making bold moves. Faced with the contagion of global recession four years ago, policy makers created a $585 billion stimulus package that helped inoculate the nation against the economic malaise still sapping the United States and Europe.
But today, even as China’s vaunted export manufacturing juggernaut loses force and the Shanghai stock market remains in a slump, the Communist Party appears so distracted by its politically tangled once-a-decade leadership transition that it is unwilling or unable to pursue the more ambitious agenda that many economists say is necessary to head off a far more serious crisis in the future.