Economic reforms still hotly debated inside Communist Party

China’s leaders will lay out plans to transform the world’s second-largest economy at a key party meeting in November, leaving the question of how to do it largely unanswered as much of the reform agenda is still a matter of heated internal debate.

People familiar with the discussions say that out of a long list of reforms that the Communist Party’s 200-member Central Committee is set to announce, only a mooted financial overhaul has reached a point where there is a plan and a roadmap.

Fiscal, land and residency registration reform – all key ingredients of China’s declared goal of boosting its urban population – are the major sticking points as politicians debate how to implement the changes and as they also face resistance from powerful interest groups, such as state-owned monopolies.

Still, the November meeting, the third plenary session of the Communist Party’s top body, is being billed as a watershed for China’s development, just like one in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping unveiled his historic reforms to open China to the rest of the world or in 1993 when the party endorsed a “socialist” market economy.

“The meeting will deepen reforms on all fronts,” said a senior economist with a government think-tank in Beijing that has been involved in drafting the reform blueprint.

“The focus will be economic reforms – financial reform, tax and fiscal reform, resource pricing reform – and there will be reforms in related areas, such as social welfare and income distribution,” said the economist, who declined to be identified because the plans remain confidential.