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China Looks Serious About 'Decisive' Market Reforms

20 November 2013

Dr Tim Summers

Senior Consulting Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme (based in Hong Kong)

2131120Third Plenum.jpg

Farmers harvest in the village of Gangzhong in China's eastern Zhejiang province, 19 November 2013, days after China's ruling party unveiled a list of sweeping changes including reforms to the land ownership system, loosening controls over state-owned enterprises, relaxing the controversial one-child policy, and eventually shuttering forced labour camps. Photo by Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images.

China’s leaders set out their intention to push forward with policy reform following the Third Plenum. The full decision released on 15 November makes clear the aim to loosen constraints on the market, and suggests a dilution of state-owned enterprise influence. A new national security committee could also lead to greater policy integration between domestic security and international affairs.

The Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Central Committee took place in Beijing from 9−12 November. Initial reactions based on the communiqué released on the last day of the meeting were mixed. However, on 15 November the authorities published the detailed decision approved by the plenum, and an explanation given to the plenum by Party General Secretary Xi Jinping – in which he acknowledged major problems facing China.

These documents make the implications of the plenum much clearer. In sum, it offers a clear political signal that as China’s fifth-generation Party leadership enters its second year, it is intent on taking forward a ‘comprehensive deepening of reform’ across a wide range of issues. As an indication of the importance of this, a new high-level ‘leading small group’ will be established to coordinate and oversee this process. The decision spells out various new measures, and reiterates many which are already part of the government’s agenda.

More market in the economy

The most important material is on the economy, where the decision makes clear that the leadership envisages a ‘decisive’ role for market forces, and the establishment of ‘fair and equal’ competition in the economy. This will provide a guiding principle for policy-making over the coming years.

One of the ways of achieving this is to reorganize the functions of government. Here the decision reiterates the themes which the government has been working on since Premier Li Keqiang took over in March this year, namely reducing or removing the need for government approvals to businesses, freeing up the investment environment, and allowing businesses and the market to take the lead unless there is a strong reason for government intervention. Better governance is a wider theme of the decision, covering the judicial system and reforms to the party’s disciplinary organs which would clarify leadership and accountability in anti-corruption investigations.

SOE reform

A possible impediment to market reforms is the power of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the original communiqué gave the impression that nothing much would be done about SOEs. However, the ability of these so-called ‘vested interests’ to stymie market reforms has been weakened by the targeting of a number of senior SOE-related cadres in the party’s latest anti-corruption campaign, which began at the end of 2012.

Further, the detailed decision suggests further reforms are in the offing. Although the relevant section of the document begins by restating the leading role for state ownership, a series of subsequent policy aims could serve to dilute it, such as ensuring equality in property rights protection and competition; developing mixed (state and non-state) ownership through cross-shareholding and bringing private capital into state-led projects; shifting from managing SOEs to managing state investments in enterprises; better supervision of SOEs which operate in natural monopolies; and removing administrative monopolies.

International affairs

The decision talks about further opening of China’s economy, but the vast majority of the issues covered in the decision are domestic in nature, and announcements such as a further relaxation of birth control policies have attracted most attention. Even the points on military and defense issues relate more to internal management than external capacity.

There was, however, one announcement which could have important implications for China’s foreign policy, which will be watched carefully outside China, the establishment of a ‘national security committee’. Xi said that this was being set up in response to external pressures to protect national sovereignty, security and development. He also cited internal pressures to maintain political security and social stability. It is too early to judge what the exact remit of this body will be, but it could lead to greater policy coordination and integration between domestic security issues and international affairs, at a time when China is playing a more important role across the international spectrum.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback




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; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Nina Totenberg | NPR

What does the right to a unanimous jury verdict have to do with abortion, or school prayer, or federal environmental regulations? Stay tuned.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday struck down state laws in Louisiana and Oregon that allowed people accused of serious crimes to be convicted by a non-unanimous jury vote. The 6-to-3 decision overturned a longstanding prior ruling from 1972, which had upheld such non-unanimous verdicts in state courts.

And these days, any decision to overturn a longstanding precedent rings the alarm bells in the Supreme Court.

In the short run, Monday's decision was a victory for Evangelisto Ramos, who in 2016 was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury vote of 10-to-2 in Louisiana.

Only two states--Louisiana and Oregon--had provisions allowing non-unanimous verdicts, and Louisiana just recently changed its law to be like those in 48 other states and the federal government.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, laid out the history behind the laws in both states. Gorsuch noted that the measure was first added to the Louisiana state constitution in 1898, after the Supreme Court ruled that racial minorities could not be barred from juries; that same year, Louisiana added the non-unanimous jury provision to its state constitution as part of a package of amendments that deliberately made it difficult for black citizens to vote or otherwise participate meaningfully in the state's governance. Specifically, Gorsuch said, the non-unanimous jury provision was a way to ensure that even if one or two African Americans made it on to a jury, their participation would be "meaningless."

The adoption of the non-unanimous jury rule in Oregon, Gorsuch wrote, "can similarly be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial and ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries."

Despite these state provisions, there has never been any dispute that the unanimous jury requirement applies to the federal government. The question in this case was whether that aspect of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applied to the states as well.

Over the last 75 years or so, the court has applied just about every other provision of the Bill of Rights to the states, but in 1972 it deviated from that practice, declining to apply the unanimous jury requirement in a similar fashion.

On Monday, however, the 1972 decision came tumbling down. The six-justice court majority — composed of conservatives and liberals — said the earlier ruling was a mistake.

The decision, written by the conservative Gorsuch, was joined in whole or in part by liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Clarence Thomas, another conservative, agreed with the result, but on entirely different grounds.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Samuel Alito — joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and for the most part, Justice Elena Kagan — maintained that the principle of adhering to precedent should be followed in this case because to do otherwise would require "a potentially crushing" number of new trials for people currently imprisoned under the old rule.

"Where is the justice in that?" replied Justice Gorsuch. "Not a single member of this court" is prepared to say that the 1972 decision was correct, he noted. "Every judge must learn to live with the fact that he or she will make mistakes ... But it is something else entirely to perpetuate" a wrong "only because we fear the consequences of being right."

The consequences of Monday's decision will likely be felt more in Louisiana, which allowed non-unanimous verdicts for more serious crimes than Oregon. The court's decision will require retrials for any prisoner who still has appeals pending.

There are about 100 of those cases in Louisiana, says Jamila Johnson, the managing attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative, which represented Ramos. But there are also at least 1,700 prisoners in the state who might qualify for a new trial if the court eventually holds that Monday's decision is retroactive.

The high court left that question open for another day.

Altogether the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions totaled a whopping 86 pages and reflected an important subtext--divergent views about when the court should follow its usual rule of adhering to precedent and when it should not.

It's important because, the new ultra-conservative court majority has very different views than the courts of the last 75 years on topics as diverse as abortion, voting rights, federal regulation, and the clash between religious views and generally applicable laws.

"The court's views about when it's OK to overrule prior precedent have always been more about the eye of the beholder than they have been about a rule that is easy or straightforward to apply," says Deborah Pearlstein, professor and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law. Ultimately, she said, "all of these major questions that are coming before the court are going to be fought along these lines."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.





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