Jury still out on whether China's leader Xi Jinping is a reformer
A year after taking over as head of the Communist Party, China's leader has left both liberals and conservatives disappointed
When President Xi Jinping steps onto a podium to deliver a much-anticipated speech at a key party plenum on Saturday, observers will keenly await an answer to a question that has lingered for a year:
Is the new Communist Party chief a reformist or not?
A year ago Xi was installed as chief of the ruling party in the once-in-a-decade succession of power. People from across the political spectrum eagerly hoped that the new leader would take up their various agendas.
Liberals hoped that Xi would herald in a new era of political liberation following two decades of change focused almost entirely on economic development. They based those hopes on Xi's parentage. His father, Xi Zhongxun, a party chief who emerged from years of purges to liberalise the economy in the coastal provinces, helped China become an economic superpower in three decades.
Conservatives believed that Xi - the princeling son of a revolutionary leader, born into the party's aristocracy - would revive some socialist principles to atone for the wrongs committed in the name of capitalist development.