ECONOMY AND TRADE Institutions

The State Council is the top administrative body of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the state founded and ruled by the CCP, and it effectively functions as the national cabinet of the central government. [...] Many other State Council constituent departments play a role in aspects of China’s economic policymaking, such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), which are discussed in the “Technology” section; the Ministry of Ecology and 5 Environment (MEE) and the Ministry of Nat. [...] He spent the first decade of his career at the predecessor agency to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administraon Commission and the next two decades in the Ministry of Finance, where his roles included Deputy Director of the Asset Valuaon Department, Director of the Economic Construcon Department, Director of the General Office (2007- 2009), Assistant Minister (2009-2014), and then Deputy. [...] The spirit of liberal economic ideals such as market reform and openness— which was still present in the 2017 report and had its last great hurrah in the decision issued by the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee in November 2013, in the early years of Xi’s consolidation of power—was essentially absent. [...] Then, at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, he changed 14 the “principal contradiction,” a Marxist term for the key problem the party wants to solve, from the contradiction between “the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production” to that between “unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.” The implic.