An elite body of China's ruling Communist Party opened a crucial policy conclave Saturday to endorse reforms to bolster a slowing economy and address imbalances built up during years of torrid growth.

The four-day meeting of the Central Committee, in keeping with tradition, is taking place behind closed doors and with minimal real-time publicity. The official Xinhua News Agency issued a terse report confirming the meeting's opening. It said the body would discuss 'major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms.'

If the party hews to past practice, details of the gathering won't be released until it closes Tuesday. Among the reforms on the table, according to officials and state media, are reforms to create more space for private businesses, liberalize the financial sector and make it easier for rural Chinese to move to urban areas.

Driving the need for change is an overall slowing of the economy, as the growth driven by investment and exports flags. Party leader and President Xi Jinping has said that the economy should become more reliant on consumption and innovation. He has said repeatedly, as recently as this week, that China needs to avoid the pitfalls that many fast-growing economies reach when once-reliable sources of growth stall.

But the meeting itself comes freighted with heavy expectations. When Mr. Xi took office as party leader nearly a year ago, the leadership's platform talked of the need to tackle issues of economic fairness, corruption, environmental degradation and other problems that critics said his predecessors had left unaddressed. Economists, media commentators and some officials around Mr. Xi have billed the meeting as the time the new leadership would lay out its policy goals.

That billing in part stems from historical precedent. The meeting, officially known as the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee, is the first chance for the nearly 400-member body drawn from the party, government and military to focus on policy. The first two meetings are taken up with party and government personnel decisions. Past Third Plenums, notably in 1978 and 1993, committed the party to undertake major market reforms.

Despite the expectations, commentators expect that the reform program endorsed will be gradual, rather than radical. Off the agenda are several nettlesome issues some economists have said need to be addressed to restructure the economy. Chief among them is making state enterprises more competitive [Company Registration].
Major state media played down the chances for fast-paced change. Xinhua's banner headline on its website said the meeting would 'seek new advances amid stability.'

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