China's leaders promise free market will play 'decisive role'

China's leaders finished a closely watched policy meeting Tuesday with a promise to give market forces a bigger role in the country's state-dominated economy, but they failed to produce dramatic reforms to overhaul a worn-out growth model.

In a report after a four-day meeting that reform advocates hoped would unleash a wave of change, Communist Party leaders gave an unusually strong endorsement of private companies as "important components" of the economy but said state industries will remain its core.

The market will play a "decisive role" in allocating resources, the party said. The official Xinhua News Agency said that was an upgrade from the "core role" assigned to the market in party policy over the past two decades.

It gave no indication the meeting considered any political reforms in China's closed, secretive one-party system. It said a national security council would be set up to improve security strategy.

Chinese leaders are under pressure to replace a growth model based on exports and investment that delivered three decades of rapid expansion but has run out of steam. Reform advocates say Beijing should open an array of state-controlled industries to private competition, but any moves to curb the privileges of politically favored companies are likely to face resistance.

The party said it will create a committee to "deepen reforms" and gave no indication when more changes might be approved. That suggested party leaders, as many observers expected, agreed on broad themes but put off battles over details such as the status of state companies that control vast swaths of China's economy including banking, energy and telecoms. -- AP