Top policymaking body goes underground

We now know why the Party's most important policymaking body has appeared to be inactive for over a year:

• At least one meeting was kept secret.

On Tuesday, the Party Central Committee's Institute of Party History and Literature revealed that the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform (CCCDR) has convened seven times since the 20th Party Congress in October 2022.

• Until now, only six CCCDR meetings had been publicized during that time period.

Secret CCCDR meetings are apparently nothing new: The Institute also disclosed that the body met 29 times between the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 and the 20th Party Congress five years later.

• Only 27 of those meetings were ever publicly acknowledged.

Get smart: An increasingly opaque policymaking system increases the risk that companies get caught off guard by abrupt changes in policy.

Get smarter: The missing meetings likely focused on sensitive issues like economic security – a theme that has topped the agenda on both sides of the Pacific since China-US relations took a sharp turn for the worse in 2018.

The bigger picture: Even counting the hidden meeting, the CCCDR is operating at a much slower pace in Xi's third term.

• By this point in his second term five years ago, the body had already met at least 15 times.
• The reduced frequency of meetings signals a major slowdown in Beijing's rollout of the reform agenda.