Moody's can judge better if modest

In a report published on Tuesday, the credit rating agency Moody's said "contradictions" exist among China's goals of maintaining a reasonably high economic growth rate, reforming its economic structure, and ensuring financial, economic and social stability, and it predicted that at least one of these goals will end in failure.

The rating agency's judgment, which came days after it cut its outlook on China from stable to negative, seems to be based on the logic that growth and stability cannot be achieved simultaneously, that deepened reform must be made by sacrificing growth. But this seemingly logical inference is a miscalculation of China's realities.

China has developed its own ways to realize reforms, development and stability, and any temporary disequilibrium among the three is soon restored to balance, as indicated by its admirable performances in advancing reforms and development and maintaining social stability over the past decades.