China leaders concludes 'reform' meeting

China's Communist Party has concluded its Third Plenum with state media hailing "deepening reforms", but no details have been released.

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China's Communist Party has concluded a closely watched meeting and has approved a decision on "comprehensively deepening reforms", state media reports.

The official Xinhua news agency, in a brief dispatch, announced the close of the four-day meeting, known as the Third Plenum.

The meeting, which brings together all 376 members of the ruling party's Central Committee and takes place amid intense security and secrecy, has traditionally set the economic tone for a new government.

A decision on "major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms" was approved, Xinhua said.

Citing a communique, Xinhua said that the market will play a "decisive" role in the allocation of resources, though it did not elaborate.

China will establish a state security committee, it said, again without immediately giving any further details.

Xi Jinping, the party general secretary, also delivered what Xinhua described as a "work report".

The meeting is seen as setting the course for the world's second-largest economy over the next decade and comes a year after China embarked on a once-a-decade leadership change, with Xi taking over as party chief in November and then state president in March this year.

Over the course of the four-day meeting Chinese state media repeatedly raised the prospect of major reforms.

In a front-page editorial, party mouthpiece the People's Daily praised past economic reforms for bringing prosperity to the world's most populous country and called for more.

Other state media have promoted Tuesday's statement of intent as potentially kick-starting the party's most far-reaching economic reforms since 1978, when China began to open up and allow a limited market economy after the Maoist extremism of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

The reforms are expected to include scaling back the power held by state firms, expanding rural land rights, easing residency restrictions for some 260 million migrants, improving social security, accelerating urbanisation, and strengthening the rule of law.

Many of the detailed reform measures are not expected to be announced for one or two years and could take several more years to implement.

They will expand and accelerate many of the party's existing policies developed over the past decade to rebalance the world's second-largest economy away from its long reliance on exports and investment.

The party's elite, 25-member Politburo agreed the reform package last month and presented them to the 376-member Central Committee for discussion and endorsement over the last four days.

However, analysts have dampened expectations, saying they anticipate a broad blueprint instead, and that pressures for change are not yet sufficient to force radical reforms.

The meeting comes after China's economy racked up its worst growth rate in 13 years in 2012, expanding at an annual rate of 7.7 per cent.


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Source: AAP


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