"China's fundamentals remain strong, with high resilience, ample leeway and huge potential," said Zhu at a forum. "None of those has changed."

There's a big distance between a slowdown and a crisis, and the former does not necessarily entail the latter.

To avoid misunderstanding, observers who simply base their reasoning on Western experiences need to think out of the box.

In developed economies, new investment opportunities are rare once there is excess capacity, but China is still in the process of industrial upgrading and urbanization, with strong need for investment in urban infrastructure and environmental protection, said Justin Yifu Lin, former chief economist of the World Bank.

Unlike other developing economies, which have investment opportunities but face fiscal constraints, China has plenty of resources, with lower government debt and high household savings, Lin explained.

Reform is another promising hedge against the downturn. China is cutting administrative red tape, overhauling State-owned enterprises, and removing barriers to let the market play a decisive role in resource allocation.

Those measures, along with efforts to reduce corporate burdens, improve financial efficiency and stimulate innovation, will help China increase productivity and overcome difficulties, said Xu Hongcai, an economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

"Reform remains China's biggest bonus," he said.

Thanks to streamlined bureaucracy, 12,000 companies were registered in China daily on average last year, up from 10,000 in 2014 and 6,900 before the reform.

Thriving entrepreneurship attests to market vitality, which is a key force shaping China's economic trend, said Zhang Mao, head of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, at a press briefing on Monday.

Jin Keyu, professor of economics at the London School of Economics, saw significant opportunities for China to achieve stable growth based on efficiency and productivity gains from deepening reform, rather than merely consumption.

While acknowledging government reform will be difficult to deliver, Jin believes action will become unavoidable if economic conditions worsen.

"Good times may breed crises in the West," Jin wrote in an article on news site Project Syndicate. "In China, it is crises that bring better times."