GOVERNMENT departments will be put in the hot seat in the upcoming fortnight as political advisers and legislators will push them to implement the reform consensus cemented by the new leadership of the ruling party.

The National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the political advisory body, convened its annual session on Sunday, and the National People's Congress (NPC), the parliament, will convene its annual session today.

Chi Fulin, director of the China (Hainan) Institute for Reform and Development, a domestic reform think tank, expects the meetings to shed light on China's future reforms as NPC deputies and CPPCC members will make proposals to the government on issues concerning people's livelihoods and state affairs.

Forecaster Byron R. Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners who has announced his annual list of "Ten Surprises" in economic, financial and political fields since 1986. This year he says China's new leaders will surprise the market in 2013 by implementing reforms to root out corruption, to keep the economy growing at 7 percent or better and to begin to improve healthcare and retirement programs.

Income redistribution

China's decision makers spent more than nine years researching and debating before the State Council issued a guideline on income redistribution in early February.

Ye Qing, deputy chief of the Hubei Provincial Statistical Bureau and a deputy to the 11th National People's Congress, thinks the guideline has offered a glimpse of the complexity of the most urgently needed reforms in China's key areas.

"The CPC's new leadership has taken a series of measures over the past three months to advocate frugality and administrative transparency and build a good public opinion atmosphere for advancing reforms. It is against such a backdrop that the guideline has been issued," said Ye.

Global credit-rating agency Moody's takes the 35-point guideline as "credit positive" because it includes a recognition by Chinese leaders that state-funded investment growth is not viable over the long term, and that a more moderate and sustainable pace of economic growth will enhance China's economic resilience and sovereign credit-worthiness.

Ye said he believed income redistribution will be discussed at the annual meetings. "I hope more detailed and feasible measures can be constituted by relevant government departments," he added.

CPPCC member Jia Kang, director of the Institute for Fiscal Science Research under the Ministry of Finance, told Xinhua on Saturday that the government must "face public concerns squarely" to have the guidelines smoothly implemented.

In his proposal to the CPPCC National Committee, Jia advocated the government spread the use of collective pay bargaining in companies, expand consumption taxes to luxury entertainment and luxury goods, tighten the monitoring of officials' non-salary and property income and introduce tougher punishment over power-for-money deals, bribery and corruption.

From pyramid to olive

"To change China's pyramid-shaped income structure to an olive-shaped one, the government must seize time to listen to the opinions of NPC deputies and CPPCC members and make timely responses to public calls," urged Jia.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, has vowed not to stall in reform and opening up. He has called on all CPC members to garner more political courage and wisdom to waste no time pushing reforms in key areas.

The road ahead for the Party and the government, however, is a rough one because a variety of key reforms are to be completed, ranging from narrowing the wealth gap, reducing monopolies, supporting private enterprises, environmental protection, reducing corruption, streamlining taxation, improving administrative efficiency, to ensuring equal access to medical services, education and old-age pensions.

According to Moody's research, the key credit challenges facing the leaders taking office in March mainly revolve around re-balancing growth toward private consumption, furthering market reform and maintaining social stability.

Apart from the income redistribution reform, which will help narrow the wealth gap and reduce the country's extra dependence on foreign trade for economic growth, China has activated reforms in many spheres since the conclusion of the 18th CPC National Congress in mid November.

The NPC Standing Committee has deliberated on a draft amendment of the Land Administration Law, submitted by the State Council, which proposes raising compensation for farmers whose collectively owned land is expropriated. Given land expropriation has been a source for rural protests, the move is expected to defuse social instability through better protection of farmers' property rights.

Responding to public grumbles over the urban-rural gap, the CPC has decided in its first policy document for 2013 to accelerate household registration reform, helping rural residents urbanize by loosening control on household registration in small townships and medium-sized cities.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planner, also prioritized resource taxes for the year's price reform, and aimed to optimize the pricing mechanism for refined oil products and natural gas.

Foreseeing tough combat to come in the year's resource tax reform, Jia Kang said reforming resource taxes will impact the allocation of basic economic resources and have a direct bearing on the development of China's market economy.

"The resource tax reform will be a substantial move to implement the Party's Outlook on Scientific Development and to optimize the country's financial and tax system," in Jia's view. This year, the Ministry of Finance has planned to broaden experiments on property taxes, deepen national debt management and use more taxation leverage to support the private economy.

Ye Qing from Hubei said that a deepened fiscal system reform is the premise for China to advance reforms in other spheres. "Thorny issues such as the wealth gap and corruption can all be associated with the waste and irrational use of public finance. I hope the two sessions can help the government unveil reform details on individual income tax, property tax and estate tax," he said.

The authors are Xinhua writers.