China opens key economic meeting

BEIJING - China's Central Economic Work Conference opened on Tuesday to review the country's economic work in 2013 and map out economic plans for 2014.

This year's meeting comes about one month after the the Communist Party of China Central Committee unveiled a landmark plan to comprehensively deepen reforms.

The meeting is expected to put forward overall requirements and major tasks for economic work in 2014.

At the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 3, China's top leaders highlighted the role of reform in planning economic development for 2014.

A statement following the meeting said China will stick to the policy tone of seeking steady progress, and reform should be integrated into all sectors of China's economic and social development in 2014.

China should press ahead with reforms in order to facilitate innovation and development. It should improve means of macro-economic control and boost momentum from within the Chinese economy for transformation of the economic growth pattern, the statement said.

China should also speed up economic restructuring and public service infrastructure development to enable more people to share the fruits of reform and development, it said.

China should maintain consistent and stable policies, and actively push forward with reforms in key sectors, it added.

The latest figures indicate that China will be able to meet the government's targets for 2013 on economic growth rate, consumer price index and new jobs, which are set to create favorable conditions for next year's economic planning.

Earlier in 2013, the government said China's growth rate should be around 7.5 percent, the CPI should be capped at around 3.5 percent and at least 9 million new jobs should be created in 2013.

Analysts with the State Council's Development Research Center, a government think tank, maintained that the most important task of next year's economic work lies in reform.

China should manage economic and social development through reform in 2014, and sweeping reforms are set to inject strong impetus for China's economic and social development in 2014, they said.

Reform should first target areas for which the Chinese public has the most expectations for reform, and focus on problems that have hindered the country's economic and social development, they added.

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