China's ruling Communist Party has commenced a key meeting focused on economic reforms, state media report, a year after a closely watched leadership transition.
The official Xinhua news agency said in a short dispatch that the gathering had begun and would discuss a draft decision by the party Central Committee on "major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms".
The four-day session of the full 376-member committee is believed to be taking place at a closely guarded private hotel in Beijing and concludes Tuesday.
Security in the form of uniformed and plain-clothes police was tight Saturday morning as a stream of black sedans with tinted windows could be seen entering the venue.
Police were preventing vehicles with non-Beijing licence plates from proceeding on the city's main thoroughfare toward the hotel, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
The meeting comes less than two weeks after a fiery vehicle crash in front of Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of the Chinese state, that killed two tourists and wounded dozens.
The government has described the incident as "terrorism" and blames separatists from Xinjiang, the far-western province home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
The party gathering, known as the Third Plenum, has traditionally set the economic tone for a new government.
In the past, such meetings have been used to signal far-reaching changes in how China does business.
Last November, China began a once-a-decade leadership makeover as Xi Jinping took over as party general secretary before becoming state president in March.
The official Xinhua news agency proclaimed that the plenum "is expected to be a watershed as drastic economic policies will be unveiled".
Analysts, however, have expressed scepticism and say broad brushstrokes rather than firm details are more likely to emerge from the meeting.
"Expectations are not very high for the economic reform blueprint which will be spelt out at the plenum," Willy Lam, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
"This is because Xi Jinping has emphasised the values of stability and also incremental changes."
China most notably signalled major reforms at a Third Plenum in 1978, when it embarked on the landmark drive that has seen it transformed over the past three decades from a Communist-style command economy into a key driver of global growth, trade and investment.
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