But they never relaxed state control over some sectors considered strategically vital, including finance, defense, energy, telecommunications, railways and ports.
Today, he says, that would mean reducing the party's control over important sectors of the economy.
The soft dictatorship of Mr. Milosevic's later years involved the fabulous enrichment of close associates given effective control over whole sectors of the economy.
The aim is not to reduce the state's control over key sectors of the economy, but to make that control more effective.
Many liberal economists in China have been calling for a loosening of state control over vital sectors, from financial services to energy and telecommunications.
Both Yugoslavia (in the 1960s) and China (in the 1980s) decentralized control over major sectors of their economies and introduced individual incentives on a significant scale.
"There is already a debate amongst the Russia elites about how modernization would affect the Kremlin's control over strategic sectors, such as energy".
They are committed to the idea of violently achieving what they say will be a fairer, socialist society thanks to land redistribution and state control over industrial sectors.
Many analysts say a fundamental overhaul would require a top-down campaign to change prevailing notions about state control over crucial sectors like finance that Mr. Xi shows no signs of embracing.
Geoffry Crothall, a campaigner from the Hong Kong-based advocacy group China Labour Bulletin, said he believed the wave of arrests against key labour organisers was "definitely part of a wider central party agenda to reassert control over all sectors of society and the economy".
