NPC may be a rubber stamp, but reports' fine print will have big impact

It is fashionable for many overseas media and analysts to dismiss the annual session of the National People's Congress, which ended yesterday, as a gabfest of unelected 'people's deputies' rubber-stamping government proposals.

There is no argument there. NPC deputies have traditionally toed the preset lines of the Communist Party, and it was no exception this time.

But anyone interested in China's growth story would miss out if they failed to pay close attention to the fine print of various government reports, and what Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior government officials offered during the NPC/CPPCC sessions.

As the world's fourth largest economy measured by GDP, Mr Wen's Government Work Report and the 11th Five-Year Programme endorsed by the NPC carry profound implications for the thrust and direction of China's economic reforms and development.

The mainland leadership's plan to build a 'new socialist countryside' is an ambitious but laudable effort to bridge the widening rural and urban divide, part of efforts to pursue more balanced national and regional development policies.

The immediate overseas media reaction to Mr Wen's annual nationally televised press conference yesterday was that he did not say anything new and simply showed off his communications skills as a populist premier.

But Mr Wen conveyed many important messages, the most significant of which was a vow to press ahead with reforms, saying there was no turning back.