China

2013 was the first year in function of the new leadership team empowered to lead China for the next ten years, the tandem of president Xi Jinping and prime minister Li Keqiang, two reformers who have vowed to change the development model and to rebalance the country’s economy. While, during the first part of the year, the premier has initiated a meticulous assessment of the economy’s condition and the president took some power-consolidation measures (Slaughter, 2013), towards the end of the year, on November 9-12, at the Third Plenary of the Central Committee of the party, president Xi Jinping presented the new team’s vision on China’s desirable future, embodied into a thorough, 60-items reform plan stressing upon the „decisive role†of markets in resource allocation, reduced public ownership and state intervention, encouraging domestic consumption and increasing openness to the world economy. Against this backdrop, this paper looks from multiple angles at the developments that have occurred in Chinese economy (economic growth and growth engines, inflation, labour market and unemployment, personal income, investment in capital goods, foreign direct investments and outbound direct investments, industrial output, foreign trade, foreign reserves, yuan evolution, lending and indebtedness etc.), at Chinese economic reform and rebalancing during 2013, as well as at the forecasts for 2014-2015.