The leadership of the ruling Communist Party of China adopted a resolution on “further deepening reform comprehensively” with a focus on the role of the market being better leveraged and preventing and defusing risks in sectors such as real estate, local government debt, small and medium financial institutions.
The 20th Central Committee of the CPC held its third plenary session (known as third plenum) in Beijing from Monday to Thursday.
Xi Jinoping, CPCP General Secretary and China’s President, delivered explanatory remarks on the draft version of the resolution titled “Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization”.
“By 2035, we will have finished building a high-standard socialist market economy in all respects, further improved the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, generally modernized our system and capacity for governance, and basically realized socialist modernization,”the resolution said, as quoted by Xinhua News Agency.
The Third Plenum has previously been an occasion for the party’s top leadership to unveil major economic policy shifts.
In 1978, then-leader Deng Xiaoping used the meeting to announce market reforms that would put China on the path to dazzling economic growth by opening it to the world.
And more recently following the closed-door meeting in 2013, the leadership pledged to give the free market a “decisive” role in resource allocation, as well as other sweeping changes to economic and social policy.
Echoing past plena, top officials promised Thursday to “give fuller play to the role of market mechanisms”.
“In building a high-standard socialist market economy, the role of the market must be better leveraged, with a fairer and more dynamic market environment to be fostered and resource allocation to be made as efficient and productive as possible,” the resolution indicated, adding that “restrictions on the market will be lifted while effective regulation will be ensured to better maintain order in the market and remedy market failures.”
In promoting high-quality development, the communique urged deepening supply-side structural reform, improving incentive and constraint mechanisms for promoting high-quality development, and creating new drivers and strengths for realizing growth.
“We will improve the institutions and mechanisms for fostering new quality productive forces in line with local conditions, for promoting full integration between the real economy and the digital economy, for developing the service sector, for modernizing infrastructure, and for enhancing the resilience and security of industrial and supply chains,” it stated.
Lynn Song, ING’s Chief Economist for Greater China, told AFP the readout offered some “positive signals”.
But, he said, it was “not a platform for pushing specific new stimulus measures”.
The meeting comes just days after China posted official statistics showing the economy grew by 4.7 percent in the second quarter of the year.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected 5.1 percent.
Beijing has said it is aiming for five percent growth this year.
