China’s top leaders are meeting in the capital this week for one of the most significant political gatherings of the decade — a plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The week-long session will outline the guiding principles for the country’s next Five-Year Plan, which will chart the course for the world’s second-largest economy from 2026 to 2030.
Although the detailed plan will only be released next year, the ongoing discussions are expected to provide crucial hints about China’s long-term economic, technological, and strategic priorities. Officials are likely to reveal key directions by Wednesday, with further elaborations expected in the following days.
Unlike Western nations that work around election cycles, China operates on tightly structured planning cycles. According to Neil Thomas, a fellow in Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute, “Five-Year Plans spell out what China wants to achieve, signal the direction the leadership wants to go in, and move the resources of the state towards these predefined conclusions.”
While the concept of bureaucrats and party officials meeting to draft national goals may seem routine, history shows that the outcomes of these plenums have often reshaped not only China but also the global economy. The Five-Year Plans have repeatedly marked turning points in China’s transformation from a struggling agrarian society to an economic superpower with far-reaching global influence.
The Third Plenum of 1978, for instance, marked the start of Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening-up” policy — a radical shift that replaced rigid central planning with market-oriented reforms. The establishment of Special Economic Zones and the influx of foreign investment during the early 1980s unleashed unprecedented growth. Millions of people were lifted out of poverty, and China emerged as a global manufacturing hub. Economists later described the resulting shift in global trade as the “China shock,” which led to the outsourcing of Western industrial jobs and contributed to political upheavals in countries like the United States, where leaders such as Donald Trump later campaigned to revive domestic manufacturing.
Decades later, the 2011–2015 Five-Year Plan turned China’s focus to “strategic emerging industries” such as electric vehicles, renewable energy, and high-tech manufacturing. Anticipating a slowdown from low-wage growth, the leadership directed vast resources toward green technology and innovation. The results have been transformative — China now dominates global solar and EV production and controls a major share of rare earth mineral supply chains crucial for chip-making and artificial intelligence.
In the most recent cycle, under President Xi Jinping, the 2021–2025 plan has emphasized “high-quality development,” a vision centered on technological self-reliance and innovation. Xi’s government has sought to reduce dependence on Western technologies, particularly advanced semiconductors, amid rising tensions with the United States. With Washington restricting access to chips and AI hardware, Xi has promoted a new slogan — “new quality productive forces” — aimed at boosting domestic capabilities in AI, computing, and chip production.
Experts believe that this drive for self-sufficiency will remain a defining feature of the upcoming plan. “National security and technological independence are now the defining mission of China’s economic policy,” Thomas says. The goal, he adds, reflects a deeper ideological commitment — to ensure China’s future prosperity and global power are never again constrained by foreign dominance.
As the plenum unfolds, all eyes are on Beijing, where the decisions taken this week will not only shape China’s economic and technological direction but also reverberate across the global order for years to come.
