It’s time for China’s annual economic check-up: what prescription can we expect from leaders?

When China’s leaders meet at the end of each year to judge the state of the economy and set policy priorities for the next 12 months, they do so behind closed doors and only release a summary of their findings when the meeting is over.

However, few who care about the global economy can afford to neglect the central economic work conference, held annually since 1994 in a heavily guarded hotel in Beijing, because it sets the direction for what is now the world’s second-largest economy.

This year’s gathering could be even more important because President Xi Jinping will be setting economic policies after consolidating his power at the Communist Party’s five-yearly national congress in October, when he was elevated to the same status as late paramount leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping by having an eponymous ideological “banner term” – Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era – written into the party’s constitution.

There are hopes that Xi, after focusing on a sweeping anti-corruption campaign in his first five-year term, will seek to advance economic liberalisation and structural reforms in his second. The conference will also offer clues on whether the leadership will address a fundamental question: how to reconcile free market forces with an increasingly illiberal state management system.