Although recent data flow has remained pretty strong,some investors are concerned that Beijing’s deleveraging efforts may derail the positive trend of industrial upgrading.This is unlikely,in our view.Firstly,Beijing’s overall policy stance on‘de-leveraging’is aimed at stabilising its debt-to-GDP ratio rather than an outright reduction in the debt ratio,at least in the near term.And deleveraging mainly targets state-owned enterprises(SOEs)and local governments(accounting for over half of total debt),as privately owned industrial firms have just emerged out of an eight year long de-leveraging process.So the policy tool of choice will be supply side policies(such as closing zombie SOEs,cutting excess capacity,disciplining local government borrowing,and curbing shadow lending),rather than tightening the monetary policy and overall financing conditions.