China to be stabilizing power in new era

It was essentially resolved by introducing market reforms that led to China becoming the manufacturing workshop of the world as well as its second-largest economy.

Xi says the aim now is to address a new principal contradiction, "that between unbalanced and inadequate development and people's ever-growing needs for a better life". To do that, it needs to move toward a higher-quality growth model and away from one dependent just on manufacturing exports and infrastructure investment.

To achieve that goal, China needs to focus on continued supply-side reform, cutting excess capacity, particularly in State-owned enterprises, and reducing income and regional inequalities. It also needs to tackle pollution, improve the regulatory and administrative environment, and ensure greater financial stability, including dealing with the issue of debt in the economy.

For some, such as Zhu Ning, a professor of finance at Tsinghua University, it is no longer about chasing GDP numbers. "The focus is now on the development of the overall economy. People have criticized China's growth being all about growth's sake and not about development," he said.

To move to a high-quality growth model will be a significant challenge for China. Economic growth is normally driven by a combination of labor and capital inputs. However, in China's case, its working population will be declining faster than most major economies because of the ongoing legacy impact of the one-child policy. The economy should also become less capital intensive if rebalancing is to be achieved and debt levels reduced.

The only option for China, therefore, is to improve what economists call total factor productivity, which means increasing productivity. Which will not be easy, as many economies around the world have battled with decreasing productivity for decades.

For George Magnus, an associate of the Oxford University China Centre and a leading expert on China's economy, technology is key to this. "Of all the areas of new era economic thinking the focus on technology is probably the most important," he said. "You just cannot keep growing investment because you will end up with problems of overcapacity, over-indebtedness and mal investment."

This is very much the policy-driven side of the new era.

China coming of age

Seven months on from Xi's speech, what does the whole concept of the new era now mean?

Certainly, the speech itself captured headlines around the world with many seeing it as China finally coming of age and occupying a central position on the world stage. The main discussions about the new era since then have largely taken place within China rather than outside.