Removing Barriers

China will target institutional barriers and deeply embedded interests in reform this year, said a statement from a Communist Party of China (CPC) reform leading group on January 23.

Priority should be given to reforms in key areas including state-owned enterprises and state-owned assets, monopoly sectors, finance and taxation, property rights protection, rural revitalization, social security, opening up, and ecological conservation, according to the statement, issued after the second meeting of the Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and head of the group, presided over the meeting and delivered a speech.

Xi highlighted the importance of reform in 2018 and called for new breakthroughs with strengthened innovation and concrete efforts.

Reform should be more systematic, holistic and coordinated to seek substantive progress in fundamental areas, the statement said.

Leading officials should lead by example in reform, and more efforts are required in research and supervision of reforms, according to the document.

At the meeting, a plan for the group’s work this year and guidelines for a series of reform measures were approved. Zhou Wenzhong on January 25.

Increased anti-globalization and protectionist rhetoric and actions have caused setbacks in efforts to advance globalization, Zhou said at a press conference in Beijing.

In this context, the Asia-Pacific region needs development that is more open, better coordinated, more inclusive and more balanced than ever before, he added.

The BFA is a nongovernmental and nonprofit international organization with a purpose of promoting economic exchanges and cooperation within Asia and between Asia and other parts of the world. Since 2002, BFA has been holding its annual conference in the beach resort town of Boao.

This year’s annual conference is scheduled to be divided into four modules—Globalization and the Belt and Road Initiative, an Open Asia, Innovation, and Reform. Zhongxing-16