China’s economic woes demand renewal of pro-market reforms, prominent scholar says

Wang Xiaolu, a researcher known for his pro-market views, has urged Beijing to commit to structural reform at its agenda-setting third plenum

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A Chinese scholar has called for a return to pro-market reforms to resolve the country’s persistent economic challenges. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 7:30pm, 18 Jun 2024Updated: 8:40pm, 20 Jun 2024

The third plenum of the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, scheduled for next month, is expected to set the tone for the country’s economic policy for the next several years. In advance of that meeting, the Post is reviewing the work of notable scholars and observers about their own expectations – as well as their thoughts on China’s economy at large. The second part of this series can be found here and the third here.

As policymakers prepare to lay out China’s economic agenda for the coming years at a high-level gathering next month, a prominent scholar has called for Beijing to recommit itself to pro-business reforms and uphold its 2013 pledge to let the market play a “decisive role” in the allocation of resources.

The exhortations from Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute, come as expectations reach a fever pitch for substantial government action to address the issues bedevilling the world’s second-largest economy, including a slump in the property market, unease among private firms and increasingly onerous trade restrictions from the West.

“Economic reform in the past four decades transitioned from a government-led [resource allocation] to a market-oriented one … The core is marketisation,” he told the Post in an interview ahead of the third plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in July, a meeting where economic policy has typically taken centre stage.

“We should continue unfinished tasks.”

Wang, who gained prominence among market-minded reformists thanks to his work on the country’s rural economy in the early 1980s, has developed indices to measure China’s level of marketisation and the state of the business environment over the past 25 years.