A Chinese state council body has put forward ambitious reforms covering a wide range of issues, many of which are crucial to the country’s horticulture industry.
The areas covered by the Development Research Centre have been identified by the China News Service as finance, taxation, land, state assets, social welfare, innovation, foreign investment and clean governance.
Some of its recommendations include highly sensitive issues, including breaking up state monopolies and speeding land reforms.
It also submits an ambitious goal of establishing the Chinese yuan as a major currency for international trade settlements and invoices, and as a reserve currency for neighbouring markets.
Three projects identified as key to furthering economic reform were easing market access restrictions, establishing a residency social security package and licensing sales of collectively-owned rural land.
Farmers would also be granted the right to trade such land under an open market that would value land throughout the country equally, regardless of urban or rural locality.
Current restrictions on collectively-owned land are thought to be a major source of social unrest in the country, which these reforms should be intrustumental in easing.
The leading government think tank’s detailed road map for implemented broad economic policy changes arrived ahead of the third plenum of the party’s 18th Central Committee next month, which provides a key window for President Xi Jinping to advance reform agendas.
President Jinping has emphasised his government’s strong investment in overseeing an effective and comprehensive reform process.
“Everyone is very concerned about China’s reform process,” he said at a meeting with the economics and management advisory board from the country’s leading academic institute, Tsinghua University. “We will be studying how to deepen the reform comprehensively during the third Plenary Session of the Communist Party and set the framework.”
Chinese media reports reflect that the road map has proved highly surprising in its frankness and ambition.
