The 10-year timeline for these prerogatives – covering a broad range of issues, from the economy to social development and state-building amid intense external challenges – would go beyond President Xi Jinping’s third term, which ends in 2028.

The state-backed Xinhua News Agency said the plenary session would “primarily examine issues related to further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernisation”.

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What does it mean for the world when Chinese consumers tighten their belts?

What does it mean for the world when Chinese consumers tighten their belts?

It would also lay out a series of interim benchmarks by 2035, before China’s second ambitious centenary goal in 2049.

The plan also aimed to improve governance while maintaining firm control by the party, with reforms to be handled in a “systematic, holistic and coordinated” manner.

Frictions with the European Union over electric vehicles are only the top of a long list of problems in international trade, with the United States enacting several tariffs and restrictions intended to blunt China’s share of emerging industries like tech.

Things also are not so rosy at home, with a property sector in crisis and weak demand preventing a full-throated recovery powered by consumption.

The meeting is typically held every five years – about a year after each new Central Committee takes office – and the group includes the party’s top decision-making Politburo, as well as ministers, provincial party secretaries, senior generals and heads of state-owned enterprises.

They are expected to take more external elements into consideration, including the “China de-risking” trend in the global supply chain, and fierce competition for markets and technology with the United States and other Western nations.

The need to expand international tech exchanges, attract and retain more overseas talent, and actively take part in global tech governance, to build an open and “globally competitive” environment for technological innovations are seen as China’s economic priorities following details released after a meeting earlier this month.

The need to adopt a proactive fiscal policy, utilise foreign capital and develop “new quality productive forces” are also set to be high on China’s agenda.

China has already announced a slew of measures to aid the ailing property market, including the easing of mortgage rules and encouraging local governments and state-owned enterprises to buy unsold housing inventory, however, some analysts remain uncertain about the effectiveness of the measures.

Unlike urban areas, rural land is owned by village committees and is mostly closed off to trade. While many have urged changes to allow rural land on the open market, authorities are likely to remain cautious.

Low-hanging fruits, such as an expansion of the scope of personal income tax to address income inequality, or the simplification of the rates of value-added tax, could be unveiled.

From seeds to semiconductors, the world’s second-largest economy is rushing to replace Western technologies and goods with domestic alternatives.

That is one of the many questions brewing as the delayed plenum approaches.

Analysts are eager to know if the country will be deviating from a doctrine developed at an earlier plenum of letting the market play a “decisive role” in resource allocation, and if not, they wonder what policies will be deployed to rebuild investor confidence and get the national economy back on track.

Beijing mentioned in April that reform would be a key topic at the upcoming plenum, and the market has been rife with speculation as to what that might entail.

The subject of reform has been broached at high-level economic meetings this year, including in the context of land, tech and innovation.

“Ahead of the third plenum in July, the prospect of meaningful cyclical easing has faded but investors still want clarity on potential reforms to the social welfare system, which remains fragmented, unbalanced and insufficient,” said analysts at Morgan Stanley this week.

“We think the plenum will likely be supply-centric, with modest social-welfare reforms.

“The plenum will likely sustain the economic framework that has taken shape in recent years: prioritising chokepoints in supply chain self-sufficiency and tech innovation.

“We think the plenum will try to strike a balanced tone by also addressing social welfare issues, particularly relating to the 200 million migrant workers who live and work in urban areas but do not have proper social welfare access. But the pace of social welfare reforms and economic rebalancing may remain gradual.”

60-Second Catch-up

Deep dives

As China’s Communist Party holds its third plenum, few major shake-ups expected

• Expectations low of any major shake-up this time at third plenum, a landmark event since Deng Xiaoping’s groundbreaking reforms in 1978

But few observers expect major directional shifts when the Central Committee meets this time around.

As calls for Chinese rural land reform get louder, will Beijing remain cautious?

• Despite widespread experiments in rural land reform across China, experts doubt any major moves will be made at the upcoming third plenum

In 1978, 18 farmers in a small village in China met in secret to sign an agreement that they would divide their village’s collectively owned land between them, allowing each household to keep any surplus harvest after they had filled government quotas.

The village, Xiaogang, in eastern China’s Anhui province, has since entered the history books as the birthplace of the household contracting system that defied collective farming and became the trigger that set China on its road to economic rise.

As China’s snowballing debt tips the scale, is a fiscal solution in the works?

• There is a fiscal gulf between China’s central and local governments, and it is seen as a hurdle to healthy and sustainable development ahead of the third plenum

On a morning in early April, when the onset of spring could feel like winter in China’s coldest region, commuters headed to work, unaware of the inconvenience that awaited.

At bus stops across Nenjiang, a northeastern rust belt city of 400,000 people in Heilongjiang province, notices proclaimed that “all urban bus routes are suspended”.

4 years after China’s push for less reliance on the West, has it made progress?

• Four years ago, China put forward its ‘dual circulation’ strategy to shore up the domestic market and reduce dependence on the West – has it made progress?

Though the days of four-legged transport – and the humble carrot as a fuel source – have passed, the root vegetable continues to serve as a rhetorical stand-in for incentives of all types. But in modern parlance, that incentive is rarely an actual carrot; humans have, after all, come to desire more than what might satisfy a mule.

But for Samuel Ling and his colleagues at an agricultural company in Shanghai, metaphor and reality have merged.

China signals push for Industry 4.0 at third plenum – why details are elusive

• Observers widely expect long-awaited conclave to double down on ‘whole-nation system’ of development, but have mixed views on the likely outcomes

The technocrats at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information technology are working on a blueprint for future technologies – from humanoid robots to brain-machine interfaces and super-large-scale artificial intelligence computing centres.

China needs ‘big bang measures’ to jolt economy, but last reforms spur doubts

• Analysts discuss why many of Beijing’s economic aspirations from 2013 have gone unfulfilled, as new reforms could be on the horizon with July 15-18 third plenum

By throwing Shanghai’s doors open with the launch of a free-trade zone in 2013, Chinese leaders put an ambitious economic engine into gear, with vows to create a bastion of international trade, free capital flows and far less government intervention in business operations.

Global Impact is a weekly curated newsletter featuring a news topic originating in China with a significant macro impact for our newsreaders around the world.