The central economic work conference wrapped up on Dec 16. It’s where Chinese leaders and senior officials sketched out the country’s guiding economic policies and priorities for the next year. Topping the agenda for 2017 are encouraging more foreign investment, accelerating SOE reform, and keeping the RMB stable while improving the flexibility of the exchange rate.

“We are now facing the challenges from both developing and developed countries, so we have to improve our investment environment. We should use foreign capital to stimulate a domestic economic structural upgrade and adjustment,” said Bi Jiyao, National Development and Reform Commission.

“We’ve mapped out a strategic plan for SOE reform. So next year, our working priority is to put it into practice. In particular, we should make breakthroughs on resource monopolies by enterprises, to make the market play more of an important role in the pricing mechanism,” said Xu Hongcai, China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchange.

“The monetary policy is shifting to a neutral one. Instead of stimulating the real economy, we’ll attribute more emphasis to risk control and deflating the asset bubbles,” said Zeng Gang, Chinese Academy of Social Science.