China's Economical Reform: Where to Go From Here?

People walk along a busy street at Pudong financial district in Shanghai. Fiscal, land and residency registration reform - all key ingredients of China's declared goal of boosting its urban population - are the major sticking points as politicians debate how to implement the changes and as they also face resistance from powerful interest groups, such as state-owned monopolies.

A man walks past a welcoming sign of the newly announced Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. Still, the November meeting, the third plenary session of the Communist Party's top body, is being billed as a watershed for China's development, just like one in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping unveiled his historic reforms to open China to the rest of the world or in 1993 when the party endorsed a "socialist" market economy.

People walk to a subway station at the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai. "The meeting will deepen reforms in all fronts," said a senior economist with a government think-tank in Beijing, which has been involved in drafting the reform blueprint. "The focus will be economic reforms - financial reform, tax and fiscal reform, resource pricing reform, and there will be reforms in related areas, such as social welfare and income distribution," said the economist who declined to be identified because discussions of reform plans remain confidential.

Construction workers work on a building under renovation work in Beijing. The changes will layout how China intends to overhaul the economy to allow greater domestic consumption to drive growth, shifting away from an exports- and investment-led model that Beijing says has run its course after three decades of breakneck expansion.

Pedestrians use a flight of stairs and an escalator located next to each other, at the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai. A major part of that is an urbanization plan aimed at drawing hundreds of millions of Chinese to live in towns and cities. But to do that, China needs to overhaul land and household registration policies that currently make many rural Chinese reluctant to move.

A labourer looks at steel coils next to a production line of Dongbei Special Steel Group Co., Ltd., in Dalian, Liaoning province. Progress in working out those and other reform details will serve investors and observers as clues on whether and how soon China's promised Great Transition will become a reality.

A view shows the city's skyline from the Beijing Yintai Centre building at sunset in Beijing. Financial reform is further along because it is already a work in progress. China has been gradually relaxing restrictions on the currency and in July freed up bank lending rates.

Labourers work on a demolition site near a residential compound in Taiyuan during a hazy day. Thanks to the efforts of China's veteran central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, there is broad support for reforms to help correct economic distortions, such as over-investment at the cost of household consumption, surging local government debt and property bubbles.

A female farmer takes a nap in a field during her break in Langfang, Hebei province. "The direction on financial reforms is clear and a consensus has been reached on how to push ahead," said Xu Hongcai, a senior economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), who is involved in the reform talks.

Migrant construction workers look at goods sold by peddlers on a small street outside their dormitories near a residential construction site in Shanghai. It is already clear that the next step will be creating a deposit insurance scheme, possibly by the end of this year. That will allow the central bank to free up deposit rates, which are now subject to administrative caps. Beijing worries some smaller lenders could go under as banks compete for deposits under a more open regime, so wants insurance in place first.

\A container truck drives past the container area at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the newly announced Shanghai Free Trade Zone, south of Shanghai. Government economists say Premier Li Keqiang has thrown his weight behind a free-trade zone in Shanghai, China's financial centre, as a testing ground for opening up financial services to foreign investors and lifting restrictions on the yuan.

A man sits on top of a hill in Yuangudui village, Gansu Province. There is less clarity about other parts of the reform agenda, which has been in the works since early this year and now is open to feedback from provincial leaders and selected policy advisers.