China eyes economic reforms at party meet

BEIJING: China\'s ruling Communist Party will hold its key leadership meeting here on Saturday to unleash a new \"wave of reforms\", stated to be the biggest in over three decades after the country moved away from Mao Zedong\'s \"chaotic class struggle\" to market-oriented policies.



The 18th plenum of the Party comprising 376-member Central Committee, one of its highest policy bodies, would hold its four-day meeting under the leadership of President Xi Jinping to deepen economic reforms and to halt the slide of the world\'s second largest economy which fell from double digit growth rates to around 7% in the last two years.



While official media was abuzz with impending wave of reforms, experts say plenums in the past acted as launch-pads for many of China\'s major reforms.



The leadership headed by Xi is working on a \'master plan\' to unveil at the plenum, which will be largely devoted to provide ideological direction to economic reforms for the next five years.



This year\'s plenum is being billed just as significant as the one in December 1978 that marked the start of market-oriented reforms in China over three decades ago under Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao and reversed the ideological course of China. Not much resistance was expected for reforms unlike in Deng-era as he had to contend to remove resistance from hardliners headed by Mao\'s widow Jiang Qing who was ousted.



On the contrary, Xi who emerged as the strongest leader in recent decades is expected to have smooth sailing as any left-wing resistance to reforms was ironed out with the ouster of disgraced party leader Bo Xilai who was sentenced to life recently for corruption and misuse of power.



Since taking over this year, Xi is pushing for more reforms as China\'s economy struggled to meet the 7.5% official GDP target this year. New leadership asserts that reforms are necessary to avert a Sovietstyle collapse of the Communist system in China.
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