NEW YORK, Dec. 6 -- The recent key plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has established "credible momentum" for carrying out fundamental economic reform in China, two U.S. experts said Friday.

The third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November presented the best opportunity for China's leadership to gain confidence, said Barry Naughton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Addressing a forum here called Prospects for Economic Reform in China, Naughton said the likelihood of a more serious and complex economic reform in China increased substantially after the key meeting.

More importantly, the agenda doesn't avoid difficult areas, such as the matters of of state-owned enterprises and land reform, he said, and addressed the areas with the most resistance and controversy, which demonstrates that China is trying to create a situation of forward movement.

The expert said the agenda also featured the role of the government and the relationship between the government and the market, in order to facilitate a greater role for the market, reduce the government's intervention in micro-economic decision making, and reverse the situation that the government intervenes too much but doesn't regulate effectively.

David Denoon, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at New York University, told Xinhua that a bigger role for market will benefit China's economy in several ways --including making it harder for government to subsidize inefficient projects, which will result in channeling resources toward efficient projects.

A bigger role for the market will also encourage talented people to go into the private sector as they see it as an alternative opportunity, he said.