Opinion | Stuck midstream in the river of reform

China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping once famously compared undertaking reforms to "crossing the river by feeling the stones".

The folksy phrase encapsulated the magnitude of challenges the nation initially faced as it began the painful transition from a planned economy to one driven more by market forces.

But after more than three decades of double-digit economic growth that propelled China's economy to become the world's second-largest, mainlanders have grown weary of Deng's famous phrase.

As one popular joke has it, most people long ago succeeded in crossing the river but it's the officials who are lagging behind, feeling the stones. Indeed, the joke sums up the biggest obstacle China faces today in pushing ahead with economic transformation - the bloated bureaucracy, the officials themselves.

Leaders decided to end political chaos and focus on economic development in December, 1978, at the third plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party's 11th congress. Since then, the leadership has used the third plenum of the ensuing congresses to set key economic guidelines to power the country forward.

In November, leaders will chair the third plenum of the 18th congress, from which the international community will be seeking clear signals of how China will steer its economic development for the next 10 years. With the nation at a crossroads, the significance of this meeting cannot be underestimated.

In the past, the government's role at the centre of the economy and its massive spending helped to buffer China against wider trends, allowing it to emerge largely unscathed from the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global one in 2008.