The real problem, analysts say, is that municipal government debt in China has begun casting a large shadow over the nation’s growth picture. If instead of investing in growth, China had to start spending money to gird the banks against municipal defaults, some experts see a possibility of China eventually lapsing into a long period of Japan-like stagnation.

Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and co-author of “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” has studied China’s boom. He predicts that within a decade China’s lofty property bubble and its mounting debts could cause a regional recession in Asia and stifle growth in the rest of the world.

“With China, you have the ultimate ‘this time is different’ syndrome,” Professor Rogoff said. “Economists say they have huge reserves, they have savings, they’re hard-working people. It’s naïve. You can’t beat the odds forever.”