Dong Yu: Making Good Use of the Valuable Experience in Formulating and Implementing Five-Year Plans
The General Secretary, Xi Jinping, delivered an important speech at the opening ceremony of the study session for principal officials at the provincial and ministerial levels, focusing on the study and implementation of the guiding principles of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). He systematically expounded the great significance of formulating and implementing Five-Year Plans, provided an in-depth explanation on how to comprehensively, profoundly, and accurately understand and grasp the strategic deployments of the Fourth Plenary Session, and put forward clear requirements for focusing on improving the Party's capability and level of leadership over economic and social development. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, through continuous development across the periods of the 12th, 13th, and 14th Five-Year Plans, our Party has successfully advanced and expanded Chinese-path modernization. A good start has been achieved in the new journey toward the Second Centenary Goal [1], and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has become an unstoppable momentum. At the opening ceremony, General Secretary Xi Jinping summarized our experience using the "Five Persistences," noting that "in the long-term practice of formulating and implementing Five-Year Plans, our Party has created and accumulated rich experience, including: persisting in the CPC Central Committee's centralized and unified leadership; persisting in proceeding from reality; persisting in the 'whole country as a single chessboard' [2]; persisting in promoting democracy and pooling wisdom; and persisting in the principle of the legal status of plans, among others." To deeply study and comprehend the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech, we must accurately grasp and utilize the precious experience of these "Five Persistences." We must scientifically plan and draw a new blueprint for development to ensure the 15th Five-Year Plan gets off to a good start and takes a solid first step, continuing to write new chapters of the two miracles [3] of rapid economic development and long-term social stability.
Persisting in the CPC Central Committee’s Centralized and Unified Leadership
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "For such a large party and such a large country as ours, if the CPC Central Committee cannot implement strong and powerful centralized and unified leadership, a situation will arise where everyone acts on their own and goes their own way [4], and then nothing can be accomplished." Persisting in the CPC Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership is the fundamental basis for our continuous victories and provides the ultimate guarantee for the formulation and implementation of Five-Year Plans.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, from the 1st to the 14th Five-Year Plans (and programs), their formulation and implementation have always persisted in the Party's leadership, comprehensively implementing the Party's line, principles, and policies, and making staged deployments and arrangements for socialist modernization within the planning period. After years of exploration, we have formed a set of standardized procedures and practices in our work: the CPC Central Committee proposes "Suggestions" (建议) for the plan, pointing out the direction and setting the keynote; the State Council, based on these suggestions, organizes relevant departments to compile the "Draft Outline" (纲要草案) of the plan, refining the content of the Central Committee's suggestions into specific indicators, tasks, and measures; finally, it is submitted to the National People's Congress for review and approval before being released to the public for implementation, making the Five-Year Plan a common program of action for all people. Through institutionalized methods, the Five-Year Plan transforms the CPC Central Committee's centralized and unified leadership into governance practice, providing a fundamental guarantee for socialist modernization.
Since the dawn of the New Era, General Secretary Xi Jinping has personally planned, deployed, and promoted national development planning work, serving as the leader of the drafting group for the Five-Year Plan suggestions. The 13th Five-Year Plan took the New Development Philosophy [5] as its main thread for strategic layout, reflecting our Party's political stance and value orientation regarding major development issues. The 14th Five-Year Plan took grounding ourselves in the new development stage, implementing the New Development Philosophy, and building a new development pattern as its logical main thread, reflecting our Party's profound reflections on future development.
The suggestions for the 15th Five-Year Plan are centered on the Party’s central task in the New Era and on the new journey. The entire text puts into practice the systematic planning and deployment for Chinese-path modernization set out by the 20th National Congress, fully reflecting the CPC Central Committee's new ideas and intentions for promoting economic and social development. For example, centering on developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions, it makes systematic deployments for accelerating high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and strength. It requires coordinating the construction of a leading country in education, science and technology, and talent; enhancing the overall efficiency of the national innovation system; comprehensively strengthening independent innovation capabilities; and seizing the commanding heights of technological development. The important deployments in the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions regarding expanding domestic demand and building a strong domestic market were refined into key tasks for this year's economic work at the Central Economic Work Conference [6] held at the end of last year, becoming important focal points for ensuring the 15th Five-Year Plan achieves a good start. At the same time, the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions emphasize persisting in and strengthening the CPC Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership, improving the Party’s capability and level of leadership over economic and social development, and continuously using the Party’s innovative theories to unify thoughts, will, and actions.
Through the general planning of economic and social development, the Five-Year Plan has become one of the important means for the CPC Central Committee to "set the direction, manage the overall situation, determine policies, and promote reform" (把方向、谋大局、定政策、促改革). It effectively transforms the Party's propositions into the national will and the collective action of the entire society, stimulating the vitality of the whole society for entrepreneurship, innovation, and creation.
Persisting in Proceeding from Reality
At the opening ceremony of the study session, General Secretary Xi Jinping provided a profound exposition on the correct view of performance (政绩观), requiring "persisting in proceeding from reality and acting according to objective laws." Our country has a vast territory; different regions have different conditions and resource endowments. At the same time, current development faces a grave and complex domestic and international environment. Only by persisting in proceeding from reality and integrating theory with practice can we obtain a truthful understanding that correctly reflects objective laws and formulate scientific decisions that conform to those laws. This also clarifies the fundamental focus for the formulation and implementation of Five-Year Plans.
Persisting in proceeding from reality is reflected in the fact that the planning process is also a process of in-depth investigation and research, as well as scientific demonstration. The compilation of the Five-Year Plan places high importance on the pragmatism of targets and tasks, realizing specific guidance for plan implementation by transforming macro goals into measurable and assessable indicators. During the drafting stage of the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions, the CPC Central Committee organized six research teams to go to 12 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities for specialized investigations. It commissioned relevant departments, units, and think tanks to carry out 35 key research projects on major economic and social development issues. The 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions not only fully consider the changes in the economic situation to clarify the baseline for steady growth, but also highlight the orientation of developing new quality productive forces. Based on new trends in industrial development, it puts forward several new requirements to drive technological innovation and industrial development. It highlights the value orientation of putting the people first (人民至上), increasing efforts to guarantee and improve people’s livelihoods, while also highlighting a green and low-carbon orientation. It strengthens deployments for actively and steadily promoting and achieving carbon peaking, internalizing the requirements for continuous improvement of environmental quality into development goals. It is precisely on the basis of going deep into reality and conducting extensive research that the guiding principles for the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions are scientific and precise, the main goals are clear, and the tasks and measures are down-to-earth and pragmatic.
Persisting in proceeding from reality is also reflected in the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions’ guidance for local development, which emphasizes category-based policies and progress rather than broad-brush or empty abstractions. For example, important measures in the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions—such as improving regional innovation systems, creating diverse forms of "open highlands" (开放高地), and improving rural construction implementation mechanisms according to local conditions—embody the philosophy of developing based on local circumstances. By using "one key for one lock" [7], regions can both serve and integrate into the overall national development while remaining closely tied to their own realities. This provides an important template for practicing the correct view of performance and implementing the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee according to actual conditions. It can effectively prevent problems that might arise during plan compilation, such as being detached from reality, blindly following trends, "adding layers" (层层加码) [8] to requirements at every level of government, impetuous advancement, simple "outsourcing," or shoddy workmanship.
Persisting in the "Whole Country as a Single Chessboard"
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must firmly establish the idea of the whole country as a single chessboard. Planning and promoting the work of one's own region or department must be predicated on implementing the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee. Work should be carried out creatively, ensuring that one both brings glory to their own locale and adds luster to the overall situation." Five-Year Plans possess outstanding comprehensiveness and totality, making deployments in an integrated manner across the country. Persisting in the "whole country as a single chessboard" clarifies the layout principles for the formulation and implementation of Five-Year Plans.
Through the integrated arrangement of key areas and major tasks, the Five-Year Plan establishes priorities for resource allocation, enabling the state to concentrate its strength on key periods and important fields to promote systemic and foundational major projects and reform tasks. For example, since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, through the promotion and implementation of 165 major projects in the 13th Five-Year Plan and 102 major projects in the 14th Five-Year Plan, we concentrated our strength to win the battle against poverty, historically solving the problem of absolute poverty. We integrated advantageous scientific and technological resources to carry out collaborative breakthroughs on key core technologies; the pace of achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance has significantly accelerated, and our ranking in the Global Innovation Index has jumped to tenth place. Furthermore, recent Five-Year Plans have placed great importance on the development and protection of territorial space. By clarifying the layout for new-type urbanization, agricultural and rural development, and ecological security, the spatial attributes of planning have been strengthened, promoting the coordinated development of the economy, population, resources, and environment, and laying a solid foundation for the layout of productive forces. Giving full play to the powerful driving role of this series of major projects can provide support for expanding domestic demand and stabilizing economic operations in the present, while also helping to accumulate new momentum and cultivate competitiveness for future development.
The suggestions for the 15th Five-Year Plan persist in the "whole country as a single chessboard," coordinating various regions, departments, and fields. For instance, in terms of building a powerful domestic market, by standardizing local government economic promotion behaviors and breaking down regional protectionism and market fragmentation, the way local governments promote development is being guided toward change. Meanwhile, persisting in the strategic pivot of expanding domestic demand and closely combining the improvement of livelihoods with the promotion of consumption—and investing in "things" with investing in "people"—allows our ultra-large-scale market to continuously become a major advantage for China’s development. Regarding regional layout, the plan optimizes the combination of regional strategies, emphasizing the overlapping effects of regional coordinated development strategies, major regional strategies, the functional zone strategy, and new-type urbanization strategies. This is conducive to optimizing the layout of major productive forces and better promoting the coordinated development of the East, Central, and West, as well as the North and South, using a systems perspective.
Persisting in the "whole country as a single chessboard" integrates all forces, coordinates various interests, and synchronizes all tasks. At the same time, by encouraging regions and departments to work creatively, it ensures the Central Committee's decisions truly take root and produce results, forming a vivid pattern where regions and departments complement each other’s advantages and develop in tandem.
Persisting in Promoting Democracy and Pooling Wisdom
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Promoting democracy, pooling wisdom, and extensively listening to opinions from all sides is a consistent practice and fine tradition of the CPC Central Committee when researching major issues and formulating important documents." The compilation of a Five-Year Plan concerns the national economy and people's livelihoods; it involves every aspect of economic and social development and is closely related to the production and lives of the masses. The process of compiling a Five-Year Plan is a process of extensively promoting democracy, concentrating the wisdom of the whole Party and the whole country, and listening to voices from all sides. Combining the strengthening of top-level design with the principle of "seeking advice from the people" (问计于民) [9], persisting in promoting democracy and pooling wisdom, and encouraging the masses and all sectors of society to offer suggestions through various channels have become distinctive features and precious experiences of Five-Year Plan compilation.
To prepare the 13th Five-Year Plan, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited farmhouses, entered enterprises, and toured industrial parks to observe the people's conditions and ask for good strategies. He successively presided over symposiums in Zhejiang, Guizhou, and Jilin, listening to the opinions and suggestions of the principal leading comrades from 18 provinces. To prepare the 14th Five-Year Plan, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over seven specialized symposiums, gathering for sincere interaction with experts, scholars, people from new social strata, truck drivers, and migrant workers.
The drafting of the 15th Five-Year Plan suggestions is likewise a process of "opening the doors to seek advice" (开门问策) and gathering intelligence and strength. The CPC Central Committee has integrated the promotion of democracy and the pooling of wisdom throughout the entire drafting process, extensively soliciting opinions. In January 2025, the CPC Central Committee issued the "Notice on Soliciting Opinions on the CPC Central Committee’s Suggestions for the 15th Five-Year Plan to be Deliberated at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee," seeking opinions within a certain scope inside and outside the Party. General Secretary Xi Jinping gave important instructions for the 15th Five-Year Plan compilation work, requiring "persistence in scientific decision-making, democratic decision-making, and law-based decision-making," and "extensively building consensus, listening to the opinions and suggestions of the masses and all sectors of society through various methods, and fully absorbing the fresh experiences created by officials and the masses in practice." General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a symposium in Shanghai on economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period for some provinces, regions, and municipalities, listening to leaders from seven of them. He also entrusted central leading comrades to preside over three symposiums to listen to representatives from the economic and scientific sectors, as well as grassroots representatives. The 15th Five-Year Plan work also included an online consultation campaign, receiving over 3.113 million suggestions from netizens.
The Five-Year Plan compilation process persists in promoting democracy and soliciting suggestions, extensively absorbing opinions to build the greatest policy consensus. This is a vivid manifestation of intra-Party democracy and whole-process people's democracy, allowing "what the Party and government want to do" to resonate on the same frequency as "what the people hope for in their hearts." Because of this, the Five-Year Plan centrally embodies the common development vision of all people, gathering a powerful synergy to promote Chinese-path modernization.
Persisting in the Principle of the Legal Status of Plans
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out:
"Leveraging the strategic guiding role of national development planning" and "improving the national strategic planning system and mechanisms for policy coordination" are essential. The implementation of national development plans fully embodies the organic unity of upholding the Party’s leadership, the people being masters of the country, and law-based governance, representing a significant advantage of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Adhering to the principle of planning by law provides the legal guarantee for the formulation and implementation of Five-Year Plans.
The development process of the planning system, with national development planning at its core, is closely linked to the process of institutionalizing planning under the rule of law. Since the founding of New China, the types of Chinese plans ([10]) have gradually increased, and their hierarchy has become increasingly clear. Currently, China is establishing and improving a national planning system that is led by national development planning, grounded in spatial planning, and supported by specialized and regional planning. This system, composed of national, provincial, and municipal/county-level plans, features accurate positioning, clear boundaries, complementary functions, and unified alignment. Horizontally, major spatial layouts are realized through spatial planning; deployments for various sectors are refined through specialized planning in those fields; and tasks spanning administrative regions are coordinated through regional planning. Vertically, by strengthening guidance for the formulation of local Five-Year Plans, the quality and standard of local planning are enhanced, ensuring the effective implementation of national development tasks. In recent years, we have placed special emphasis on planning guidance, policy coordination, and specialized synergy, insisting that planning sets the direction, finance provides the guarantee, banking offers support, and other policies coordinate accordingly. By decomposing the main indicators of national development plans into the annual indicator system and ensuring balance between years, a systemic promotion and closed-loop implementation mechanism of "long-term strategy—development planning—annual plans" has been formed.
Adhering to the principle of planning by law and codifying mature practices into legal institutions—thereby leading and guaranteeing the construction of a unified planning system through the rule of law—is conducive to maintaining the internal coordination and unity of the planning system. This enhances the consistency of the macro-policy orientation, creates synergy in planning, and further improves the implementation guarantee mechanism for national development plans, providing institutional support to better leverage their strategic guiding role. Currently, the legislative process for national development planning is steadily advancing, and China’s construction of planning under the rule of law will enter a new stage. Using the rule of law to guide and guarantee the construction of a unified planning system will better transform our institutional advantages into national governance efficacy.
The scientific summarization of the "Five Upholds" [11] valuable experience further enriches and develops General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on development strategies and planning, raising our Party’s understanding of the patterns of medium-to-long-term development planning to a new height. Looking at the world, how to properly handle the relationship between short-term development and medium-to-long-term development has always been a global challenge. General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on development strategies and planning have enriched and improved the theory of development planning, achieving a systemic construction from strategic conception to strategic implementation. This has deepened our Party’s understanding of the law of governance by a communist party, the law of socialist construction, and the law of the development of human society [12]. It is an important ideological crystallization of the political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics and a major contribution to global development economics. It provides not only scientific guidance for China’s economic and social development but also valuable experience and an important reference for developing countries to explore development paths suited to their own conditions.
In the New Era on the new journey, we must strengthen our confidence in our system, firmly grasp and utilize the valuable experience of the "Five Upholds," and comprehensively, deeply, and accurately comprehend the decision-making deployments of the Party Central Committee. We must accurately grasp the general trend of development, scientifically plan goals and tasks, precisely formulate policy measures, and make pragmatic and concrete deployments. We must continuously enhance the foresight, guidance, and innovativeness of our planning to inject strong momentum into promoting major breakthroughs in strategic tasks concerning the overall situation of Chinese-path modernization, and to ensure decisive progress in basically achieving socialist modernization.