China's economic stability comes with hidden costs

Remember when China's economic crash was imminent and ready to take down the rest of the world with it?

Those concerns, which peaked with the 2015 crash of the Chinese stock market, have since receded, giving way to more subtle worries about the country's sky-rocketing corporate debt levels - and an eventual day of reckoning.

This uneasy calm is reflected in the International Monetary Fund's latest outlook on the world's second largest economy.

"China continues to enjoy strong growth-projected at 6.7% for 2017. And the country has potential to sustain strong growth over the medium term," the Fund said its latest assessment of China's economy, dated Aug. 15. "But to do so safely requires speeding up reforms to make growth less reliant on debt and investment."

The following six charts capture the dynamic of fragile, debt-fueled stability: