China's half-year report card on economic reform: slow, safe and steady

China's President Xi Jinping arrives for the closing ceremony of Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, March 13, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

(Reuters) - Six months into China's grand economic makeover, Beijing is playing it safe, choosing gradual progress on many fronts over game-changing, riskier reforms such as removing all controls over bank interest rates.

Yet taken together, the incremental steps promise to reach enough critical mass to sustain reform momentum and help the world's second-largest economy shift down fairly smoothly after decades of red-hot investment-fuelled growth.