China’s leaders face challenge of drawing up a five-year plan for an uncertain world

Country is facing ‘much more international uncertainty than when it drafted its last five-year plan’, academic says

Communist Party’s upcoming plenum meeting will also seek to strengthen Xi Jinping’s grip on power, observers say

Reading Time:4 minutes

China’s leaders are trying to plan for an uncertain world. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:00am, 11 Oct 2020Updated: 11:17pm, 11 Oct 2020

When China’s economic planners drafted the country’s last five-year plan in 2015, they said the international environment had “never been more complicated”.

They might have spoken too soon.

At that time, policymakers in Beijing saw the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement proposed by the Barack Obama administration to lift trade standards among major economies, as one of their biggest headaches.

This year, with the collapse of the TPP – after Donald Trump pulled the US out – Beijing is faced with something much worse: across the board confrontational policies from Washington, technology ambitions choked by sanctions imposed by the US, and economic growth dragged down by overseas markets struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Relations between China and the US are at their lowest for decades. Photo: Shutterstock

Against that backdrop, Beijing will roll out a new five-year plan for 2021-25 at a key party conclave set to run from October 26-29, just a week before the presidential election in the US.

“China is seeing much more international uncertainty than when it drafted its last five-year plan,” said Shi Yinhong, an international affairs expert at Renmin University and an adviser to the State Council, China’s cabinet.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x