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REDEFINED ASIA by  David J. Karl   |  on September 16th, 2013  |  Two recent news items out of China have raised expectations that the new leadership in Beijing intends to push ahead with major market-oriented policies.  The first is an announcement that a key Communist Party conclave will gather in November to set out an economic blueprint for the coming decade.  The second is that Jiang Jiemin, the head of the commission overseeing the sprawling array of state-owned companies, has been sacked for corruption.  Since these well-connected firms have  stymied key economic reforms  in the past, some view the move as an attempt to bring defenders of the status quo to heel in the ramp-up to November’s meeting. The country is at a significant inflection point, one that the most ardent proponents of the “China rising” narrative (examples  here ,  here  and  here ) failed to see coming.  With the econom...