Growth pivot clouds 'reform and rebalancing'

Policy priorities have quietly shifted, but some say fine-tuning not enough

China's second-quarter economic growth turned the corner after a weak first quarter, but the government's increasing pivot to growth has many worried that the "reform and rebalancing" agenda is taking a back seat.

Those concerns are not groundless. After first-quarter growth dipped to an 18-month low of 7.4 percent, policymakers and market participants debated whether the government needed to act swiftly to safeguard the "around 7.5" percent official GDP target.