Duncan Innes-Ker

Senior economist, Economist Intelligence Unit

Current extent of central economic control is unsustainable in the longer term and the government needs to lessen central directives.

Free up the financial sector.

Relax controls on broadcasting, telecommunications and online activity.

Improve the quality of higher education, which lags behind the West, apart from the country's elite universities.

Reform local government finances so those providing local services are less reliant on land sales.

George Magnus

Senior economic adviser, UBS

Shift from an investment-based to a consumer-led economy.

Improve the welfare and social security system so people feel more confident to spend.

Private firms and entrepreneurs need to be given more incentives.

Major reform of the financial sector needed, including liberalization of interest rates.

Understand the risks of major policy changes, which could make things worse rather than better.

Oliver Barron

Head of NSBO China, a Chinese government policy investment research house

Allow Chinese yuan to appreciate which would provided a wealth boost to Chinese consumers.

Set in process financial reform to enable small banks to lend to the SME sector to avoid funding crises seen in Wenzhou last year.

Allow more foreign private investment in sectors such as healthcare so they can better develop.

Introduce more stringent property taxes and make the economy less dependent on real estate investment.

Professor Hans Hendrischke

Professor of Chinese political economy and director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney

Reform the local taxation system to deal with chronic local government under-funding.

Free up the financial system so the big State-owned banks no longer dictate interest rates and monopolize deposits.

Reform State monopolies and open up restricted industries to the private competition.

Realize China's long term problems might not be easily solved by quick fixes or Western prescriptions recommended by the World Bank.

Professor Zhu Ning

Deputy director, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

The reforms needed from reforming SOEs to developing a social security system need to be top down and led by the State Council, China's cabinet.

SOEs need to become truly market-oriented enterprises.

Greater emphasis needs to be placed on encouraging and fostering innovation, which will drive the next stage of China's growth.

A fairer and more efficient tax system is needed.

China needs to follow on from the successes of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and seek greater openness with the rest of the world.

Bernhard Hartmann

Managing director, A.T. Kearney, Greater China

China has to convert its SOEs into world-class companies without necessarily changing their State-owned model.

Companies within many leading sectors of the economy need to adopt high-end technology.

Too many companies, particularly in heavy industries, like chemicals, operate in the low-tech high volume segments of the market.

Greater efficiency needed in energy use and also resources like water.

Reforms do not necessarily have to be led with a Western mindset and can build on the strengths of the current system.

Michael Spence

Nobel Prize winner and professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business

Resources need to be allocated so there is a greater return on investment.

Training and education of the workforce increased so human capital is deepened.

A recognition that the Western model is not the only alternative to China's present system.

Large State-owned enterprises insulated from competition are not the way forward.

Opening up of financial markets is needed but the question is when.

(China Daily 03/02/2012 page5)