When President Xi Jinping of China spoke at a meeting on Tuesday to celebrate the country’s shift 40 years ago to an era of “reform and opening up,” expectations were high that he would enumerate steps for revamping the economy and defusing trade tensions with the United States and others. The meeting commemorated a Communist Party leaders’ conclave in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping and other veteran revolutionaries set China toward market-friendly, pro-growth policies that would eventually transform the country into the world’s biggest economy after the United States.
