By Joe Cash and Ellen Zhang

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese officials acknowledged on Friday the sweeping list of economic goals re-emphasised at the end of a key Communist Party meeting this week contained “many complex contradictions,” pointing to a bumpy road ahead for policy implementation.

Following a four-day, closed-doors meeting led by President Xi Jinping, which takes place once every roughly five years, officials made a raft of pledges, from modernising the industrial complex to expanding domestic demand and from stimulating growth while curbing debt risks.

The initial summary of the meeting, known as plenum, did not contain details on how Beijing plans to resolve these tensions between these goals, such as how to get consumers to spend more while resources flow primarily to producers and infrastructure.

“Pushing forward Chinese-style modernisation faces many complex conflicts and problems, and we must overcome multiple difficulties and obstructions,” Tang Fangyu, deputy director of the policy research office of the Party’s central committee, said on Friday as committee members met the media.

These contradictions in Chinese policy efforts have been present for decades, as were goals to increase manufacturing value added, enhance social security, liberalise land use and improve local government tax revenues.

But making tough choices is an increasingly urgent task as the world’s second-largest economy faces multiple challenges, from weak domestic demand and deflation risks, to a relentless property sector downturn, a debt crisis in some cities and higher tariffs on Chinese goods from key trade partners.

China grew at a slower than expected pace in the second quarter, leaning hard on industrial output and external demand, but showing persistent domestic weakness.

Some analysts saw the fact that the plenum outcome borrowed heavily from China’s existing playbook as disappointing.

Chinese stocks were slightly lower on Friday, in line with other Asian markets, suggesting the plenum failed to lift investor sentiment.

“Nothing new under the sun: the same industrial policies, the same sense of things,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist Asia-Pacific at Natixis.

“Really no change in direction, no consumption-led growth, nothing. No sentence on the power of market forces, nothing. So, it’s really disappointing.”

China is expected to publish a document with more detailed policy plans in the coming days.

SUPPLY-SIDE

After a similar plenum in 2013, Beijing launched a policy agenda that included most of the goals announced on Thursday, but also ambitions to liberalise financial markets and make domestic consumption a more prominent driver of growth.

A capital outflows scare in 2015 halted many of these plans. Many analysts argue that national security considerations have pushed China in the opposite direction in recent years, tightening control over swathes of the economy with regulatory crackdowns on industries including tech and finance.

Instead of leaning on household demand, Beijing had poured resources into infrastructure and real estate, which led many local governments across the country to accumulate debt at an unsustainable pace.

Beijing has recently highlighted advanced manufacturing as a new growth driver, again sidestepping consumers, with leaders hoping an industrial leap could save China from the middle-income trap and stabilise the job market in the process.

The plenum reasserted China’s quest for “new productive forces”, a term coined by Xi last year that envisions scientific research and technological breakthroughs for industrial expansion.

“There is still tension between expanding the supply side of the economy and boosting household spending,” said Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“The communique mostly focused on ‘new productive forces’, ‘the scientific and technological revolution’, and ‘industrial transformation. Mention of support to household wellbeing didn’t come until the tail end.”