The greatest limitation on the economic liberty of Chinese was capital controls. Recently the party took a big step away from capital controls by allowing ordinary Chinese to buy and sell gold as an investment. As Europe and the US moves towards capital controls, the party continues to move away from capital controls.
The Central Bank of China has announced:
Starting from July 21, 2005, China has moved into a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand with reference to a basket of currencies.
It still “managed†but in the west, everything financial is managed. We have not had anything remotely resembling a free financial market since Basel.