国内英语新闻:China at key stage of reform, development

BEIJING, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) - Deeper reforms, especially systematical ones, will be carried out and extended to more key areas in China during the next five years to provide further momentum for the country's future development after it comes out of the economic crisis, economists and observers have said.

The ongoing Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee is discussing the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), or the nation's development plan for the next five years, and "reform" is set to be one key topic at the meeting.

At a meeting of the CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau two weeks ago, it was agreed that the coming years will be a crucial stage to deepen the reform and opening-up process while accelerating the transformation of the nation's economic development pattern.

The reform and opening up in China, which started more than 30 years ago, had helped the country to achieve rapid economic development in the past decade, and it is widely expected to enter a new stage and touch upon issues that are hard to penetrate, especially systematical ones, in the next five years.

Peng Sen, deputy director with the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top economic planner, said the systematic and mechanism restraints are the main crux that had frustrated the progress of China's economic development pattern transformation.

"Without major breakthrough in the system it would be difficult to achieve a fundamental change in the way of economic development," he told Xinhua.

Chi Fulin, head of the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development, told Xinhua that the 12th Five-Year Plan is likely to focus on systematic reforms in economic, political and social fields.

While further improving the market economy system, China should speed up forming a public service system and a public service-oriented government, which would lay the foundation for boosting domestic demand and sustainable development, Chi said.

Wang Tao, an economist with UBS Securities, praised the Chinese government for efficient moves in the face of the global crisis, since a powerful government is able to position all of its economic resources.