Other signs of slowdown are emerging. Chinese industrial production for the first two months of the year fell back to levels seen during the 2008 financial crisis, while fixed asset investment for January and February was the weakest since 2001 and retail sales hit a decade low.  In response to growth concerns, the government has stepped up stimulus measures, such as cutting banks' reserve requirements and interest rates, some of which run counter to reform goals, such as moves to cut industrial overcapacity and reducing overreliance on credit.  One scorecard of progress on reforms cites backtracking over the past eight months. Morgan Stanley's Deleveraging Scorecard on 10 segments slipped to 48 from 51 eight months ago, out of a total 100, the bank said in a note this month.  "China's deleveraging looks set to stay a long and bumpy ride," it said, citing falling scores in areas including guiding down the real exchange rate, fiscal transfers to low-end households and small-and-medium-sized enterprises and generating negative real borrowing rates. But it saw improvement in recognizing banks' non-performing loans, better controls on informal credit and in capital markets development.  Whether China faces risks from debt defaults became the second-largest concern after geopolitical risks in the March fund manager survey from Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, with 19 percent of those surveyed ranking it as their greatest concern.  China's total system leverage in yuan terms reached 247 percent of official gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, Morgan Stanley estimated.  Read More Scope of China's anti-graft drive surprising: Rudd  Concerns over whether China will maintain its resolve to enforce environmental controls to rein in rampant pollution also took a hit over the past few weeks after Beijing censored the documentary "Under the Dome," which was highly critical of the country's regulators and industry and graphic in its depiction of the effects of pollution.  China's total system leverage in yuan terms reached 247 percent of official gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, Morgan Stanley estimated.  To be sure, not all reforms are in danger of going by the wayside.  Efforts to reduce red tape remain at the top of the government's agenda, HSBC said in a note this week, adding that the five-year target to reduce a third of all administrative approvals has already been achieved.
China's economic slowdown has pushed policy makers toward stimulus measures, spurring concerns over whether long-sought reforms may falter.