The same language was used after a politburo meeting last week that laid the groundwork for Li’s work report.

So far, Beijing’s response to the economic challenges has been some modest lowering of interest rates and infusions of liquidity by China’s central bank, some modest fiscal stimulus directed at strategic industries rather than consumers, some modest measures to make housing more affordable and some limited efforts to provide cheap funding support for property developers deemed to be relatively well managed.

Xi’s fingerprints are all over the policies that have led to China’s current position.

His “housing is for living, not speculation” mantra led to the restrictions on leverage that blew up China’s property market.

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A crackdown on perhaps overly arrogant and increasingly powerful tech companies decimated that sector and chilled the private sector more broadly.

His tightening of espionage laws has seen an exodus of foreign capital.

The uber-tough approach Beijing took to the pandemic has left lasting scars.

The bold statement of China’s economic ambitions and the subsidisation of strategic sectors like electronic vehicles and solar technologies has created a protectionist backlash within China’s major export markets.

Thus, it is improbable that there will be any significant policy reversals or bold shifts that might be regarded as an admission of past mistakes.

Xi himself seems to view this period as one of necessary short-term pain in order to produce a more stable economy, and one more tightly directed and controlled by the party, in the longer term.

That’s why, while there is an expectation that Li will announce some stimulatory measures, they are likely to be incremental and narrowly targeted.

A priority is to stabilise the property sector and the downward spiral that has been occurring in house prices and sales that has played a major role, probably the major role, in consumer conservatism.

A 25 basis point reduction in the five-year loan prime rate last month, a key rate for mortgages, was a step towards that but Beijing will need to do more to clear the stock of uncompleted apartments that overhangs the market, as well as cleaning out the distressed development sector.

The appointment of liquidators to China Evergrande and court action to appoint liquidators to Country Garden – two of the biggest of the developers – could be the start of the necessary process of restructuring the sector, which has been frozen by its leverage and the government’s unwillingness to accept the massive losses for its banks, local governments and citizens that would flow from a dispassionate acknowledgment of its condition.

Xi’s fingerprints are all over the policies that have led to China’s current position.

There will be keen interest in seeing what, if anything, further the authorities are prepared to do to accelerate the necessary, if painful, reforms needed if a property sector that holds much of China’s household wealth is to be downsized and stabilised. At some point, some of the debts within the sector will have to be “socialised” if that is to occur.

There should also be some acknowledgment of the need to respond to the excess production and capacity in China’s factories, where activity has shrunk consistently over the past year.

Xi’s emphasis has been on state-owned enterprises and state-driven policies, providing direction and subsidies for efforts to grow China’s presence in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotech, aviation and other industries where scale and innovation (and control of raw materials) might provide China with competitive advantages.

China’s dominance of electric vehicle and solar may have given it dominant global positions in those industries but they have also created a backlash from the US and Europe, which have not only introduced protectionist policies that raise the cost of imports from China but are actively canvassing measures to reduce China’s access to their markets.

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More broadly, there is a fear that the combination of the weakness of domestic demand within China and its excess production capacity will result in a flood of cheap exports into Western markets. Donald Trump won’t be the only one contemplating steep universal tariffs on Chinese products if that flood eventuates.

China has managed to stabilise its stock markets, although it has taken heavy state intervention – buying by China’s sovereign wealth fund and other state institutions and bans on short-selling, restrictions on sales by some institutions and a crackdown on computer-driven trading – to get the market to bottom out and, in the process, attract some buying from offshore hedge funds.

That, like many of Beijing’s responses to its myriad challenges, is a reprieve, not the solution.

There is some hope that, even if the current congress produces only modest responses to China’s challenges, it proffers more stability and predictability in the government’s policies and its decision-making.

It’s not in China or anyone else’s interests for its economy’s structural weaknesses to be left unaddressed or its policymaking to be as unpredictable and antipathetic to growth as it has been in recent years. This year’s congress could provide a start, at least, in creating a more stable and positive economic environment.

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