As expected, the Chinese Communist Party’s Third Plenum meeting last week was disappointing for anyone expecting detailed plans or exact policy prescriptions for reorienting China’s flagging economy. The initial communique, the subsequent resolution, and even President Xi Jinping’s speech at the gathering revealed no new grand strategy to build domestic confidence and restore foreign investors’ interest and enthusiasm.
But even if they are short on details, Third Plenums—as the third meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s sitting Central Committee are known—can unveil the party’s view of the direction ahead. As such, last week’s meeting offered Xi an opportunity to signal a new vision for the future. Instead, its outcome bore a remarkable similarity to that of the 2013 third Plenum, at which Xi unveiled his economic strategy for the first time as the party’s general secretary.
Put simply, Xi’s ambition has been and still is “economic structural reform”: to remake the Chinese economy so that it is more efficient, more coordinated across regions, less polarizing between the haves and the have nots, and more effectively regulated by an authoritative government in Beijing.