Five-Year Plans: A Key Approach of the CPC's Governance of China

BEIJING, Nov. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from en.qstheory.cn

Formulating medium- and long-term plans to guide economic and social development is an important approach with which the Communist Party of China (CPC) governs the country. As China's most important medium- and long-term planning tool, five-year plans represent an arrangement for advancing the strategy of socialist modernization. They serve as both a blueprint and an action plan for economic and social development. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the CPC has formulated and implemented a total of 14 five-year plans, all of which have helped drive China's economic and social development, increase its composite national strength, and raise people's living standards.

I. Understanding the formulation and implementation of five-year plans as China's important political strength

While many countries draw up medium- and long-term economic and social development plans, China's ability to consistently formulate and execute five-year plans toward predetermined goals and achieve remarkable success in doing so is extraordinarily rare. This unique political advantage has earned widespread recognition from the international community, with some noting that China has established the most ambitious planning system of our time.

Establishing a well-conceived approach for guiding economic and social development with CPC's latest theories

During the course of its modernization, China has developed, through experimentation, an institutional framework for formulating and implementing five-year plans. Under this framework, the CPC Central Committee proposes planning recommendations, the State Council then drafts a five-year plan, which is reviewed and approved by the National People's Congress, before being released to the public for implementation. Through this process, the CPC is able to effectively translate its latest theories and propositions into national commitments and coordinated social action. In contemporary China, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era serves as a powerful theoretical tool for guiding China's sustained and healthy economic and social development, as well as a sound guide for the formulation and implementation of China's five-year plans. This important thought encompasses a host of new ideas, viewpoints, and conclusions, which include the following: We must ground our efforts in the new stage of development, implement the new development philosophy, create a new pattern of development, and pursue high-quality development. It also defines the CPC's position on major issues, including its political stance, values, and development model and path. All of this helps ensure that our five-year plans are forward-looking, strategic, and well-conceived.

Helping to pool resources behind major undertakings

Since 1949, China has accomplished a raft of urgent, complex, dangerous, and critical tasks relating to major engineering projects, scientific and technological research, poverty alleviation, coordinated regional development, disaster response, and other areas. Our success in this regard has come from our strength of being able to pool resources behind major undertakings. By formulating and implementing five-year plans, we have been able to ensure the CPC Central Committee's centralized, unified leadership over economic and social development. Moreover, we have ensured the mobilization and coordinated action needed to plan and accomplish major initiatives. During the process of formulating five-year plans, we have planned out measures and built broad consensus by soliciting extensive feedback. In implementation, our planning system, which is guided by five-year plans, has enabled us to advance national objectives by breaking them down into sub-goals for different levels and sectors, thereby effectively mobilizing the resources and energies of all sectors to move the country forward as a coordinated whole.

Guaranteeing full follow-through on our blueprint

Chinese modernization cannot be achieved in a single stroke. Rather, it must be steadily advanced through the completion of successive stage-based objectives. Five-year plans not only establish objectives and implementation roadmaps for each period but also ensure policy stability and consistency in terms of core themes and tasks, approaches, plans, policies, measures, indicators, and projects, thus creating a relay-like approach for achieving long-term goals. Through the implementation and execution of successive five-year plans, China has made steady progress toward modernization and is now embarking on a new journey toward the Second Centenary Goal.

Giving better play to an efficient market and an effective government

In line with continuous improvements to the socialist market economy, China changed its approach to five-year plans, reflecting that it has moved away from managing microeconomic activities to ensuring stronger macro and strategic guidance. This shift has given rise to the need to better balance the relationship between the government and the market, so as to ensure that market vitality is fully unleashed and government regulation becomes sounder and more effective. On the one hand, the government takes the lead in allocating public resources and channeling private-sector resources in order to meet binding targets in the five-year plans, which cover major engineering projects, public services, ecological protection, and other areas, while market entities actively participate in these endeavors with a view to generating synergy. On the other hand, market entities take on the primary role in accomplishing tasks relating to projected targets, industry development, and structural adjustments, with the key role of the government being to create a favorable policy, institutional, and legal environment. 

II. How China formulates and implements its five-year plans

Since 2012, President Xi Jinping has introduced a series of new ideas, viewpoints, and conclusions on the formulation and implementation of five-year plans at important venues, including the fifth plenary sessions of both the 18th and 19th CPC Central Committees, as well as special seminars. He has stressed that "Our principles, policies, and development plans should all reflect the people's will, aspirations, and expectations." He has underscored the importance of balancing the five relationships between inheritance and innovation, the government and the market, openness and self-reliance, development and security, and strategy and tactics. He has emphasized, "Implementation should always be our top priority. To this end, detailed plans should be made and responsibilities should be clarified to ensure no task is left undone." He has also highlighted the need to "refine the mechanisms for dynamic monitoring, midterm assessment, and final evaluation." These statements and many others have clearly defined the values, principles, methodologies, and practical requirements that must be followed in formulating and implementing five-year plans. They are a distillation of our Party's invaluable governance experiences.

Taking both domestic and global perspectives into consideration 

Five-year plans are primarily focused on China's domestic economic and social development. That said, China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world. We must fully consider the international environment and accurately define China's global strategic position. As President Xi has said, "To create a top-level design, we need to have a deep insight into global development trends, accurately grasp the common aspirations of the public, and thoroughly study the laws governing economic and social development. This will ensure that the resulting planning and policy frameworks are current, follow the laws of development, and brim with innovative thinking." This statement reflects clear strategic thinking.

Remaining both goal- and problem-oriented

The implementation of five-year plans is ultimately achieved through specific development strategies and major tasks. At the same time, these strategies and tasks should be determined on the basis of addressing key issues. They must be developed and carried out through an integrated goal-oriented and problem-oriented approach. President Xi has emphasized the need to both work backward from strategic goals to "clarify tasks that must be completed by specific deadlines" and work forward from pressing problems to "identify paths and methods for overcoming challenges." This statement embodies clear dialectical thinking.

Coordinating overall planning and focusing on priorities

As they encompass all aspects of economic and social development, five-year plans must be underpinned by coordinated planning and unified implementation. At the same time, they should also focus on key priorities and serve to pool resources for overcoming major challenges. President Xi has emphasized, "We must not only work to comprehensively advance economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological progress, as well as opening up, national defense development, and Party development, but also focus on weak and underdeveloped areas, concentrate efforts on making breakthroughs, and propose feasible approaches and practical measures." This is a reflection of President Xi's systematic thinking.

Strengthening top-level design and conducting extensive public consultation

Strengthening top-level design helps enhance the consistency and synergy between objectives, tasks, and policy measures. At the same time, conducting extensive public consultation helps reflect public opinion, pool collective wisdom, and consolidate public support. As President Xi has noted, "We need to solicit public opinion and draw on collective insights. While strengthening top-level design, we should also conduct extensive public consultation to give full consideration to social expectations, public wisdom, expert opinion, and primary-level experience during the formulation of plans." This statement encapsulates the advantages of China's whole-process people's democracy.  

Better leveraging the strategic guiding role of national development planning

Five-year plans are a concentrated expression of our national strategic intentions, medium- and long-term objectives, as well as our tasks in a given period. They are effective tools for macroeconomic governance under the conditions of the socialist market economy. For this reason, President Xi has called for "accelerating efforts to establish a planning system that is institutionally sound, well-regulated, and operationally effective, to develop mechanisms for coordinating development planning with fiscal, financial, and other policies, and to better leverage the strategic guiding role of national development planning." This indicates the path we should follow to improve the macroeconomic governance system.

This is an excerpt from an article titled "Fully Grasping the Requirements for Formulating and Implementing Medium- and Long-Term Plans" by Qiushi Editorial Department published in Qiushi Journal, English edition, No. 4, 2025.

SOURCE en.qstheory.cn