They should have done years ago. There are some smart people in trade and commerce within China. The same cannot be said for the muppets that pull the strings. However, we all know that this will not happen and the Brylcreem boys in Beijing will hang on to control. The consequences will be the eventual destruction of everything good that they had within their grasp.

Actually I have more faith in China's leadership than I do with the West's leadership (US/UK etc).

This is why...

The leaders in the west all seem to come from Law or PR backgrounds...all talk but no substance. China's leaders are nearly all engineers. Therefore systematic and good at problem solving. Who is "running" UK economy? A clown with a History degree and minimal work experience. (In reality it's Goldman-Sachs!)

Western politics and economic strategy seems to be all short term. Just get things sweet up to the next election, win public opinion and we'll sort any problems later....if we can.

I feel China looks very, very longterm...they don't have to worry about elections or public opinion so can make decisions that will prosper in 10 or 20 years not in 3 or 4.

They have a strategy, they have thought of declining resources, peak oil etc and have plans in place to counter these to China's advantage.

The draw back in the system is unaccountability....as the saying goes "The emperor is far away and the mountains are high". So enforcing the strategy varies wildly from city to city, province to province...

But with all China's problems at the moment, you ask any old person what they think and they will tell you that despite all the issues they've never had it so good. When you think back over Chinese history for the last 100 years, its not impossible to see why they would think that.  

A long term plan, really? It doesn’t seem like they have that wonderful of a plan to me. The environment is a mess and getting worse by the day. They have just admitted they don’t intend to really cap Co2 emissions any time soon. The building new apartments when most can’t afford them and they are giving serious thought to gutting higher education because they can’t create any demand for BA’s, MA’s or Ph.D.’s.
Maybe a CNC machinist can make better money starting out, but once you dump millions of 3 year tech. grads into that job market then the demand no longer exist and equation makes those jobs pay less and less and less. At the end of the day this country has too many people and very soon waaaaaaay to many old people.

"China is thinking long term because it is not restrained by democracy" is a lieu commun and a fantasy I'd rather let to western journalists and other apologists. At best, it is a half truth. Yes, people are usually too stupid to vote anywhere in the world, but the benefit of democracy is giving leaders some sense of facing their shit every once in a while, which the CCP could definitely use.

Because oh yeah, they actually are drawing 10, 20, 50 years objectives between two sessions of self-praise in their congresses. For example, the goal during Zhou Enlai's years was to have every Chinese owning a car and an apartment by 2020. This was the ultimate indicator of happiness and measurement of progress in civilization. That is what Chinese long term plans look like. See the problem with that no accountability shit? Now back to adult talk.

If anyone was thinking anything long term in this country, they'd have been reforming education a generation earlier, they'd have controlled their environment before it got completely destroyed, they'd have put a little more though into what "modernity" should be like.

But no, the only strategy so far has been to look at whatever the US does (I won't say the west, Europe is a tomb no one is looking at), copy it, try hard to push people to do better with heavy use of magic slogans, then ultimately fail, because you don't become the empire by replicating the empire. If you do that, you either become a vassal state, a target or a wasteland. Accepting the western definition of "modernity" was the first nail in the coffin, a courtesy of Deng "doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice" Shopping. Yes my good sir, only when you get a cat to do the job, don't expect it to play ball like a dog. Not only achieving "modernity" in 20 years meant the total destruction of nature and society, but also, this is a one way trip, because now a once placid population has turned into identical money-obsessed savages, the poison is there and there is no going back. At some point, they even thought they could have it both ways should they isolate the population from outside influence as much as they could, which resulted in yet another nail in the coffin: mass ignorance. Perverse side effect : foreign degrees becoming the standard of a minimal quality education, how pathetic. Check, check, check, check mate.

So the question, can they control the economy? I'd give the exact same answer that describes all falling empires in history: too late.

Another problem is the difference between the central government and the local governments.

Let's just assume for a second that the central government is benevolent and is not mired by in-fighting between factions (which it is) and wants to pull off deep and structural reforms.

Then the local governments have to actually implement those new laws and reforms. There is no accountability and no transparency lower down in the local governments (There are a few exceptions like Beijing, Shanghai and some wealthier counties on the east and south coasts) and these local officials are some of the most short sighted, self entitled people I have ever had the misfortune to meet.

Did you know that China actually has laws in place regarding pollution, safety, environment and intellectual properties?

Well they have, but none of these laws are enforced because that would hurt the pockets of the local officials because a lot of the factories are owned by the local governments.

Beijing can want reforms all they want, but in the end it all stands and falls with a bunch of corrupt, short sighted criminals who are only interested in getting as much loot as possible and then run away to Canada.