While both interest-rate liberalization and deleveraging are critical to the long-term health of China’s economy, the skyrocketing cost of borrowing is forcing many low-risk companies, which are unable to offer sufficiently high rates of return, out of the market. At the same time, real-estate developers who have borrowed heavily from shadow-banking institutions, based on the assumption that property prices would continue to rise steadily, may struggle to repay their debts, with a sharp decline in prices inevitably leading to defaults.