China's Economy, Back on Track

Next month, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang will use an important meeting — the so-called Third Plenum of the Communist Party's 18th National Congress — to unveil China's priorities for reforming economic policy for the next decade.

Yet because it will probably decide only general policies, leaving the specifics for later, some cynics have already begun to dismiss the reforms as too little, too timid and too late. They note that a decade ago, a previous generation of leaders failed to reduce the influence of state-owned enterprises and to complete the economic reforms of the 1990s.