What is the Chinese Communist Party’s third plenum?

Between July 15th and 18th members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party are meeting for its third plenum, an event that happens roughly every five years. What is this conclave and why does it matter?

Plenums usually happen seven times in the Central Committee’s five-year tenure. But the third plenum usually attracts particular attention: it is sometimes used to give a boost to reforms in the world’s second-largest economy. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping used it to introduce reforms that set a poor and insular China on the path to becoming an economic superpower. In 1993 the third plenum established a framework for building a “socialist market economy”. And in 2013 Xi Jinping used it to set in motion the abandonment of the one-child policy and to encourage private investment in state-owned businesses.