Evolution, not revolution, is the key to a fair grade of China’s report card on economic reforms

This week, in the corporate world, it’s performance review week. Line managers across the globe are sitting down with their team members, scorecards in hand, assessing past year’s performances, and setting targets and budgets for the next.

As many of us know, this can be a nervous time, not least because one’s remuneration – if not one’s job – largely depends on a positive outcome.

It’s no different in China. This week, the appropriately communist-sounding Central Economic Work Conference kicks off in Beijing with the aim of reviewing the previous year’s performance and setting the economic agenda for the next.

Quite possibly, this year’s meeting will also generate nerves. Alongside the usual challenge of tackling the country’s growing mountain of debt, a bubbly property market, and a slower growth trajectory; there’s also a rather large Trump in the room in the shape of pending tax reforms in the United States, rising US interest rates, and still tense bilateral Sino-US trade relations.

A positive outcome is by no means assured, although we are likely to never know whether jobs and livelihoods are at stake, given the secretive nature of the conference and the vague reports typically published after the three-day affair concludes.

But even wearing the pinkest, rose-tinted, half-full glasses, it will be difficult to point to concrete examples where reforms have meaningfully advanced.