In the runup to November’s big Communist Party confab, known officially as the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, expectations among reform advocates are high. At the third plenum in 1978, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping announced gaige kaifang, or reform and opening-up, ending the self-imposed isolation of the Cultural Revolution and exposing China’s economy to market forces. “Thirty-five years after the Communist Party of China lifted the country out of 10 years of chaos and started economic reform and opening up, analysts say the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC has the potential to be a landmark event,” China’s official news agency, Xinhua, wrote on Oct. 9.
Several recent indicators, however, have made it harder to know what the plenum will bring. On Sept. 29, the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone was opened. Designed as an economic laboratory that could usher in more market freedoms, the zone was hailed weeks earlier as a harbinger of serious change. Yet the chief backer of the zone, Premier Li Keqiang, did not attend the opening ceremony. “None of the top leaders were present, not even a vice premier,” says Bo Zhiyue, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore. Li’s no-show raised concerns that top leaders might be split on change.
