Explainer: How to understand China's major development objectives over next 5 years

BEIJING -- Formulating and implementing five-year plans has been a hallmark of China's governance, enabling the country to promote coordinated economic and social development over the medium and long term.

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) carries unusual weight, as only 10 years remain before 2035, a milestone year by which China aims to "basically achieve socialist modernization."

In late October, the Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership adopted its recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan, outlining seven-pronged objectives to steer the country's development through 2030.

These objectives -- spanning high-quality development, scientific and technological innovation, reform, cultural and ethical progress, people's well-being, ecological conservation, and national security -- embody a systematic and well-rounded vision of integrated development.

The goals underscore a strong strategic orientation, as they are closely aligned with China's longer-term visions of basically achieving socialist modernization by 2035 and building a great modern socialist country by mid-century.

The objectives laid out in the recommendations aim to remove bottlenecks that impede domestic economic flows, address pressing livelihood concerns, and enable China to gain new ground in global competition.

For instance, the recommendations focus on remedying weak links in modernization to ensure that, by 2035, China will have raised its per capita GDP to be on par with that of a mid-level developed country, joined the top ranks of innovation-driven nations, and basically achieved new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization.

To this end, the recommendations specify that during the 15th Five-Year period, China will keep economic growth within "an appropriate range" and "fully unleashing the potential," strive for "faster breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields," ensure "much more equitable access to basic public services," among others.

The objectives also reflect specific requirements for China's current development stage, combining established tasks with new priorities.

The established tasks include "improving the socialist market economy," "strengthening the systems and mechanisms for high-standard opening up," "achieving the goal of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 as scheduled," and "fulfilling the goals for the centenary of the People's Liberation Army in 2027 as scheduled."

New tasks include "a notable increase in household consumption as a share of GDP," "breakthroughs in developing new quality productive forces," and "a basic framework for the integrated development of education, science and technology, and human resources."

Taken together, these targets capture the stage-specific priorities that will define China's economic and social development over the next five years, laying the groundwork for the country's next leap toward its 2035 vision.