10 Things You Need to Know About Third Plenums

9. The party secretary sometimes goes travelling before the plenum to highlight his policy priorities.

Rural land reform was the focus of the last plenum in October 2008. In September of that year, Party Secretary Hu Jintao visited Xiaogang Village in Anhui Province. The village was one of the first to introduce the household responsibility system in the late 1970s, under which farmers, in effect, manage their own fields.

Hu told his hosts that their rights to their farmland would "not change for a long time," and that the party was now encouraging agricultural land to be rented out. The following month, the plenum passed the "Decision on Some Important Questions in Promoting the Development of Rural Reform," It encouraged land transfers, commercial farming, integration of collectives, integration of rural and urban areas and the extension of urban hukou to rural migrants. This year, there is much talk of allowing the sale and trading of rural "construction" land – or property held by village collectives on which houses are built. One progressive idea is to allow this land to be sold or rented out to residential developers or industry, with payments going directly to farmers.

Party Secretary Xi seems to like to travel, and we expect him to go on a pre-plenum tour this October. He visited Shenzhen in December 2012, clearly linking himself to Deng Xiaoping's famous pro-reform southern tour of early 1992. Xi called for "no stop in reform, no stop in opening up." He said, "We should dare to tackle difficulties and venture along dangerous paths to break through barriers to reform presented by ideological differences and vested interests."

On his October trip, people will be expecting direction on which particular difficulties will be faced at the upcoming Third Plenum, which paths will be chosen and which vested interests are in his firing line.

10. Reform has already begun.

The 2013 Third Plenum shares at least one similarity with the one in 1978: key reforms have already begun. Anti-corruption efforts introduced earlier this year are having a clear impact, administrative approval powers are being limited, some prices are being liberalized and monetary policy has not been significantly loosened in the face of a prolonged slowdown. We think the Third Plenum will act as a catalyst for these trends and put the party's stamp of approval on many more.