In short, supply-side structural reform demonstrates more government intervention in economic activities, which is identical to the nature of Xi’s top-level design in the policy-making process. Second, the central leading groups (the CLGFEA and the CLGCDR) take charge of economic policy making. They designed and introduced supplyside structural reform as Xi’s signature measure to restructure the economy. The CLGFEA has initiated almost every significant economic policy since Xi Jinping was announced publicly for the first time as the director of the CLGFEA in an elaborately planned media pronouncement on June 13, 2014. The CLGFEA, as the key decisionmaking body, discussed and made key decisions on national energy strategy, innovation-driven growth, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the creation of the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank and the Silk Road Fund, the RMB joining the Special Drawing Right currency basket, poverty alleviation and the healthy development of the stock market, and so on (Chen et al. 2018). As the top priority of Xi’s measures for economic restructuring and deepening reform, supplyside structural reform was first initiated at the eleventh CLGFEA meeting on November 10, 2015. The idea of supply-side structural reform set the tone for the CEWC that was convened during December 18–21, 2015. The fact that the CLGFEA generated the original idea of and made the decision on introducing supply-side structural reform illustrated that the group had openly stepped onto the front stage on drafting major economic decisions. Following the main task of supply-side structural reform, the CLGFEA continued to focus on refining the guiding principles, designing the road map and setting priority areas for the reform at the twelfth and thirteenth meetings on January 26, 2016, and May 16, 2016, respectively. More specific measures for further promoting supply-side structural reform were worked out at the fifteenth meeting on February 28, 2017, aiming to solve some particular issues, including how to tackle the zombie enterprises, preventing and controlling financial risks and establishing a permanent mechanism to promote a healthy housing market (Xinhua 2017e). In addition, Xi tried to use the authority and institutional resources at the CLGCDR to help promote supply-side structural reform. At the twenty-third meeting of the CLGCDR that was held on April 18, 2016, four months after the idea
24
CIGI Papers No. 242 — May 2020 • Alex He
of supply-side structural reform was formally introduced at the CLGFEA and the CEWC, Xi tried to connect supply-side structural reform with institutional reforms in other sectors under the umbrella of the CLGCDR. Specifically, Xi asked at the CLGCDR meeting to accelerate the institutional reforms in the SOE, finance and monetary sectors and deepen opening-up so as to lay a solid foundation for supply-side structural reform (Xinhua 2016b). Xi highlighted supply-side structural reform as the touchstone of the resolution for reform and called for all the ministries and local governments to combine the promotion of supply-side structural reform with implementing the measures on the agenda for comprehensively deepening reform at the twenty-fourth meeting of the CLGCDR on May 20, 2016 (Xinhua 2016c). In short, the CLGFEA and the CLGCDR, the party’s two leading groups with a dominant role in promoting supply-side structural reform, fully demonstrated the idea of Xi’s top-level design in the reform. Xi pushed further in this regard. Supply-side structural reform was added to the party’s constitution at its 19th National Congress in October 2017, constituting a component of Xi and the party’s leadership over everything. This move unprecedentedly demonstrated Xi’s idea of the party’s absolute leadership over significant economic policies and reform measures.
Conclusion: Impacts of Xi’s Top-level Design on China’s Economic Policy Making In a nutshell, Xi’s style of leadership is a modern version of Mao’s rule in the era of the digital economy, featuring the Xi-dominated party central’s absolute control over policy making in every sector and field in China. It is a total counter-reaction of the political reform toward a more open, pluralized, democratic and collective decision-making process since Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Compared with Xi, it is fair to say that in the eras of Jiang and Hu, political reform stalled and the democratization
