Xi's vision focuses on Party more than reform

President Xi Jinping laid out a sweeping vision to transform China into a strong global power while guaranteeing Communist Party rule for decades. According to Bloomberg, those looking for details on major economic reforms didn’t find much. Xi on Wednesday outlined a three-decade road map to entrench China’s great power status. Much of Xi’s plan focused largely on fortifying the party, which he said “leads everything.” His remarks on reform – pledging to open up to foreign businesses, deepening state-run enterprise reform, strengthening financial sector regulation – hewed closely to language that has underwhelmed investors looking for a more decisive structural overhaul. Notably, Xi didn’t explicitly state growth targets into the next decade, a sign that China may start focusing more on the quality of economic expansion. Xi said China’s biggest challenge is improving living standards for its citizens. “The report sent few new signals on either near-term cyclical policy or longer term structural policy,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note.