By Li Hongmei

Following a four-day Central Committee meeting, the Party released a communique promising to establish a special "leadership group" on reforms, but meaningful action will be needed before history can judge it as transformative, analysts say.

The meeting, known as the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, is closely watched both at home and abroad because the Party has used previous gatherings - most notably in 1978 when it embarked on fundamental economic reforms - to signal changes of historic significance.

As expected, the Party calls for "comprehensively deepening reform" and pledges to let the market "play a decisive role in allocating resources."

It set a deadline of 2020 for the achievement of "decisive results" in the reform of key areas.

"We can find some useful implications such as judiciary reforms and some land reforms from the communique, but the communique may not make this Third Plenum a watershed event," Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists Lu Ting and Zhi Xiaojia wrote in a report.

Some saw the document as largely positive, saying it suggested a level of sophistication that is required to move ahead.

Authorities would need to centralize much of the power to make decisions in order to push forward economic reforms, ANZ bank economists Liu Li-Gang and Zhou Hao wrote in a report.

"Practically, they will also give the markets an important role so that all types of resources can be better allocated for greater efficiency," they added.

"This shows that the new leadership does understand China's realities and reform challenges."

Andy Xie, a Shanghai-based independent economist formerly with Morgan Stanley, said that reining in corrosive corruption, a campaign President Xi has already launched, would have more immediate impact than long-term institutional changes.

"The only way to diminish the distortions in the economy is to tie the hands of the government officials," Xie said, adding: "That is why the anti-corruption campaign is central to any economic reform."

Ultimately, it will be action in the future that determines how the meeting's pronouncements are judged, analysts said.

"We think that the plenum that just concluded has the potential to mark a new beginning of positive changes," Hong Kong-based Societe Generale economist Yao Wei wrote in a report.

"Now having said what needs to be said, the new leaders should do what needs to be done. The real test has just started."