Xi Jinping ‘personally’ steering China’s reform process, state media report says
- President has taken lead in ‘design, coordination, supervision and implementation’ of reforms, according to Xinhua
- It comes as the ruling Communist Party marks the start of the country’s economic transformation 45 years ago
In a report on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua said Xi had taken the lead in the “overall design, coordination, supervision and implementation” of reforms. He did so as head of the top party group on systemic reform – a body that was initially a leading group and later upgraded to a top-level commission.
Citing unnamed “authoritative sources”, the report said Xi had “carefully reviewed each draft of major reform plans, making revisions word by word and sentence by sentence”.
The report said Xi had chaired 70 meetings with the leading group and commission on a series of major reform plans since the 18th party congress in November 2012, when he took power.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up policy, after then-leader Deng Xiaoping set the country on the road to economic transformation at a meeting of the party’s Central Committee held from December 18 to 22, 1978.
The Central Committee pledged further reforms and laid out dozens of market-oriented measures at a meeting in November 2013, a year after Xi took office.
Xi personally oversaw the drafting process of the document on reforms that was passed at that meeting in 2013, according to the Xinhua report. It said the document “for the first time proposed the overall goal of comprehensively deepening reform … to advance the modernisation of the national governance system”.