By Rodger Baker and John Minnich

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will convene its Third Plenum meeting Nov. 9. During the three-day session, President Xi Jinping’s administration will outline core reforms to guide its policymaking for the next decade. The Chinese government would have the world believe that Xi’s will be the most momentous Third Plenary Session since December 1978, when former supreme leader Deng Xiaoping first put China on the path of economic reform and opening.

Whether or not Xi’s policies will be as decisive as Deng’s — or as disappointing as those of former President Hu Jintao — the president has little choice but to implement them. China’s current economic model, and by extension its political and social model, is reaching its limits just as it had prior to Deng’s administration. The importance of the upcoming meeting is that it comes at an inflection point for China, one that its leaders can hardly afford to ignore. Read the rest of this entry »