Wu Zhiyuan: Effectively Transforming the Institutional Advantages of the Party's Leadership over Economic Work into Governance Efficacy—Based on the Perspective of Five-Year Plans

Development is the foundation and the key to resolving all of our country’s problems. Adhering to the Party's leadership is a crucial historical lesson from the CPC’s century-long struggle. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee ^[1] listed "adhering to the Party’s overall leadership" as the foremost of the six major principles that must be followed for economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Institutions represent fundamental, overall, stable, and long-term issues concerning the development of the Party and the state’s undertakings. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the institutional system of leadership, through which the Party "exercises overall leadership and coordinates all efforts" in the economic sphere, has continuously matured and taken shape. Whether the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership can be converted into high governance efficacy is a matter of whether the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics can be fully manifested. To continuously enhance the momentum and vitality of socialist modernization and promote high-quality development under the current complex situation, we must strengthen the building of the Party’s leadership institutions and their enforcement capacity, effectively converting the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work into governance efficacy. The Five-Year Plan is a vital means for promoting the steady and long-term progress of China's economic and social development, and it serves as the "key" to understanding the "Chinese miracle." This article will analyze the Party’s leadership institutions and leadership efficacy from the perspective of the "Five-Year Plan."

I. The Institutional Advantages of the Party’s Leadership over Economic Work Urgently Require Conversion into Governance Efficacy

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a New Era. In terms of economic construction, we have persisted in the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability, fully, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the new development philosophy ^[2], accelerating the construction of a new development pattern ^[3], and solidly promoting changes in the quality, efficiency, and momentum of economic development. China’s economic development has achieved historical successes: "The balance, coordination, and sustainability of our country's economic development have been significantly enhanced, and the economy has embarked on a path of development that is higher quality, more efficient, fairer, more sustainable, and more secure."

The construction of an institutional system is a fundamental, overall, stable, and long-term issue for the cause of the Party and the state. The historic achievements of China's economic development in the New Era rely on the institutional guarantees and governance support of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Unquestionably, the Party’s leadership institutions and their conversion into governance efficacy are key factors. "Party politics is a type of institutionalized, standardized, and proceduralized political behavior"; "our country's national institutions and national governance system are highly consistent with the political logic inherent in the Party’s political building." In the Party, the government, the military, society, and academia, in the east, west, south, north, and center—the Party leads everything. The system of Party leadership is our country's fundamental leadership system and holds a commanding position within the institutional system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Economic construction is the central task of the Party. The Party’s leadership profoundly influences and even determines our country’s economic governance system and governance capacity, manifesting the "significant advantages of adhering to the Party’s centralized and unified leadership, adhering to the Party’s scientific theories, maintaining political stability, and ensuring the country always advances along the socialist direction." Throughout its century of struggle, and especially since entering the New Era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, our Party has continuously consolidated the foundation of its leadership institutions and explored scientific and effective measures to convert these institutions into governance efficacy, allowing the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership to be continuously demonstrated. The level of institutionalization and standardization in the Central Committee’s formulation of major guidelines and strategies, its making of major decisions, and its deployment of major tasks has continuously improved. The mechanisms for implementing the Central Committee's major decisions and deployments have been continuously refined. Furthermore, the systems and mechanisms through which local Party committees at all levels implement the Party’s line, principles, and policies, and exercise correct leadership over regional economic construction, have also been continuously strengthened. In short, the leadership system through which the Party "exercises overall leadership and coordinates all efforts" in the economic field has become more complete, mature, and finalized, providing the fundamental political guarantee for China's high-quality development.

However, we must also clearly recognize that "the negative impact of changes in the current external environment is deepening, and our country’s economic operation still faces many difficulties and challenges." The foundation for the continuous recovery and improvement of our economy urgently needs further consolidation. Particularly in the current situation, difficulties in areas such as boosting domestic consumption demand, improving investment efficiency, developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions, and the orderly combination and effective transmission of macro-control policies all urgently require breakthroughs. This indicates that our country's economic governance efficacy still needs improvement, and the modernization of our economic governance system and governance capacity still urgently needs to be raised. Problems are the drivers of governance; economic development and operation always involve problems that evolve dynamically. This means that economic governance activities cannot cease, and the institutional conditions behind them, as well as the mechanism by which institutions are converted into governance, naturally become a focus of continuous practical and theoretical attention. This is clearly a systemic project: "Persistence in and improvement of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the promotion of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, is a major strategic task for the whole Party. It must be conducted under the unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, with scientific planning, meticulous organization, a combination of long-term and short-term goals, and overall promotion." To manage China's affairs well, the key lies with the Party. Facing the current challenges in China's economic governance, we must, on the one hand, persist in and improve the system and mechanism of the Party's leadership over economic work. As General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized, "The system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is distinctive and efficient, but it is not yet perfect or fully matured." The academic community is also deeply concerned with this, noting for instance that "although the main framework of the Party's leadership institutional system has basically formed, problems and shortcomings such as incomplete mechanisms and uncoordinated institutional links still exist"; "since there is a law of diminishing marginal utility for institutions, they need constant improvement and refinement to maintain the continuity of institutional advantages"; and "by enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of reforms in key institutional units, we can realize the overall optimization of the Party’s leadership institutional system... allowing the Party’s institutional system to penetrate the interior of the social body as a set of values, principles, and norms, becoming the intrinsic spirit and normative system of Chinese economic, political, and social life," and so on.

On the other hand, governance is the key. Governance efficacy is the result of institutional execution and operation; only high-efficacy governance can truly demonstrate institutional advantages and strengthen institutional confidence. The core essence of converting the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership into governance efficacy lies in achieving the organic unity of Party leadership and national governance. Exploring the paths and methods to "embed" the system of Party leadership over economic work into the processes of economic governance and development should become a priority for both practitioners and theorists. By comparing institutional building and institutional execution in practice, one finds that problems in the latter are more prominent. Issues such as institutional failure, institutional vacancy, "empty-spinning" of institutions ^[4], and distorted execution still exist to varying degrees in many governance fields. Regarding this, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "The problem of having rules to follow has basically been solved; the focus for the next step is strict enforcement." Some scholars have also pointed out that we must "profoundly recognize that the execution of intra-Party regulations has become a conspicuous shortcoming in the construction of the intra-Party regulatory system in the New Era" and that "the Party has preliminarily established an execution mechanism for implementing the system of the Party's overall leadership." We must truly tighten the "cage" of institutional norms, making institutions a hard constraint, resolutely preventing them from becoming "scarecrows" or "rubber bands," and effectively converting the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work into governance efficacy to continuously improve the quality of China’s economic operations. Based on the above analysis, this article will focus on a specialized discussion of the "execution" process (mechanisms, principles, methods, etc.) of the Party's leadership institutions. Of course, this does not mean the article favors a "dichotomy" between institutions and governance—that is, discussing governance apart from institutions. Governance cannot exist without institutional support; governance and institutions are "two wings of one body." ^[5] In practical operation and theoretical research, we should persist in coordinating institutions and governance. Furthermore, the reason this article focuses on the governance efficacy of the Party's leadership institutions is based on the following considerations:

First, fundamentally, institutional advantages are not merely expressed through formal finalization and completeness; they must be "verified" and tested through governance efficacy. That is to say, the institution is not the "end point"; governance is the "last kilometer" for realizing institutional effects. The vitality of an institution lies in its execution. Governance is the "practical" form of the institution. Governance activities carried out around "systemic governance, law-based governance, comprehensive governance, and governance at the source" possess extremely rich realistic content, thus providing vast space for exploration and expansion that requires specialized research. More importantly, the practical process of conducting governance according to institutions and its results can, to a certain extent, serve in turn as the basis for evaluating the merits of the institutions themselves. Institutional optimization is a dynamic process of synergistic improvement between institutional advantages and governance efficacy.

Second, from a practical perspective, the governance efficacy of the same institution often varies. It is not uncommon for good institutions to go unexecuted or be executed ineffectively. This stems from differences in various subjective and objective factors during the execution process (such as the consciousness and behavior of governance subjects, the governance environment, and conditions). Therefore, it is extremely necessary to research and examine the process, mechanism, and environmental conditions of releasing governance efficacy. In-depth analysis and exploration of "institutional execution" possess relatively independent and substantial practical and theoretical value.

Third, from the dialectical relationship between institutions and governance, institutional design must itself take into account its future execution and effectiveness. This is an inevitable measure for enhancing institutional adaptability. That is to say, the process of institutional construction must evaluate its future governance efficacy; the expectation of future governance efficacy has become a prerequisite or basis for institutional construction. Governance efficacy has become an intrinsic component of institutional construction, further reflecting its importance relative to institutional construction. Institutional "designers" should possess the vision of "executors" and cannot adopt a "dichotomous" attitude toward institutions and governance. Only by deeply researching and integrating execution issues into the design process of the Party’s leadership institutions—and by always persisting in the integrated promotion of both formulation and implementation—can we ensure that the Party’s leadership institutions are practically feasible.

Fourth, in the face of the people's aspirations for a better life and the complex domestic and international economic environment, our country's economic governance system, governance capacity, and economic operational status have attracted significant attention. "Unlike other countries, the momentum of China's economic development, besides the dual mechanisms of government and market, involves the extremely important factor of the ruling party, which possesses the characteristics of an 'encompassing organization.'" The CPC has always persisted in taking economic construction as the center. How to give full play to the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership over economic work and effectively convert these advantages into economic governance efficacy has become increasingly urgent and is highly anticipated. Accordingly, conducting a systematic analysis of the enforcement capacity of the Party’s leadership institutions over economic work is of great significance, as this is the decisive factor for the overall efficacy of economic governance in socialism with Chinese characteristics. It must be emphasized that research on the enforcement capacity and execution process of the Party’s leadership over economic work often involves numerous economic governance subjects (such as the NPC, the government, the CPPCC, enterprises, and social organizations), because the Party’s leadership is realized through "exercising overall leadership and coordinating all efforts."

II. The Five-Year Plan is a Governance System with Chinese Characteristics that Fully Leverages the Institutional Advantages of the Party’s Leadership

Through long-term practice, the Five-Year Plan has reached a state of increasing maturity. It both responds to the needs of reform and promotes the deepening of reform. It has developed into a complete governance system and framework for "maximizing" the application and practice of the institutional system of socialism with Chinese characteristics—especially the Party’s leadership institutions—and for the coordinated promotion of economic and social development. It is a crucial "hub" for enhancing the Party's leadership efficacy. It is necessary to explain that, through long-term practice since the "First Five-Year Plan," the Five-Year Plan has continuously developed and improved, and now covers all aspects of national governance. Given that "in leading the socialist cause, the Communist Party of China must persist in taking economic construction as the center, and all other work must obey and serve this center," this article in many instances defines the Five-Year Plan as an "economic governance system," or rather, it primarily researches the economic governance portion of the Five-Year Plan. The system of Party leadership is the logical prerequisite for the formulation and implementation of the Five-Year Plan; meanwhile, the practical results of the plan require the guarantee of the Party's leadership institutions. In other words, the "full cycle" of the Five-Year Plan is permeated with and reflects the principles and logic of the Party's leadership. Accordingly, the relationship between the Party’s leadership institutions and the Five-Year Plan is one of a two-way interaction between institutions and governance. In terms of its attributes, the Five-Year Plan is an economic governance system with unique Chinese characteristics, fully demonstrating the powerful national governance capacity under the Party's leadership. The Five-Year Plan is an important field of China's "party politics." As the execution and application of the Party's leadership institutions, it possesses extremely rich connotations and broad extensions. It contains profound logics and requirements of Party leadership and leadership institutions, carrying the important mission of converting the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work into governance efficacy. As General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the symposium on economic and social development for the "15th Five-Year Plan" period with representatives from some provinces and cities: scientifically formulating and consecutively implementing Five-Year Plans is an important experience of our Party in governing the country and is also a significant political advantage of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The specific analysis is as follows:

First, from the perspective of the formulation process, the Five-Year Plan is a process through which the Party...

The comprehensive application of the leadership system characterized by "exercising overall leadership and coordinating all parties" centrally embodies the execution process and capacity of the Party's leadership system. It profoundly reflects the orderly coordination and efficient operation of Party-government and Party-mass relations, serving as a practical model for implementing the system of Party leadership over economic work. Taking the national Five-Year Plans as an example: since the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan, our Party has, through long-term practice, gradually explored and formed a set of rules and procedures under the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. In this process, the Party Central Committee proposes recommendations for the plan, the State Council formulates the plan outline, and the National People's Congress (NPC) deliberates and approves it before it is released to the public for implementation. This procedure clearly reflects the practical process and concrete configuration of Party-government relations during the drafting of the Five-Year Plan. It is the objective form through which Party-government relations are realized in the planning process. These relations constitute the core and key of the system of the Party’s total leadership and remain a central issue in contemporary national governance in China. At the same time, our Party gives full play to the initiative of the masses in participating in the drafting of plans; close Party-mass relations have played an active role in this regard. During the drafting of the 14th Five-Year Plan, an online public consultation was conducted. From May 20 to June 20, 2025 [sic], a similar online consultation was held for the 15th Five-Year Plan, receiving over 3.113 million suggestions from netizens, providing a useful reference for the plan’s formulation. General Secretary Xi Jinping issued important instructions on studying and absorbing these opinions, emphasizing: "The broad masses of the people have actively offered advice and suggestions, putting forward many valuable opinions; relevant departments should earnestly study and assimilate them." Party-mass relations also fall within the scope of the Party's leadership system because, in terms of the fields of relations being adjusted, the system of the Party’s leadership involves intra-Party relations, Party-government relations, and Party-mass relations. From the above analysis, it is evident that the drafting process of the Five-Year Plan is itself an application of the Party's leadership system. It is a process of giving full play to the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership and a process of transforming the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work (since the Five-Year Plan involves all aspects of economic and social development, including rich macroeconomic policy content, the drafting process constitutes a typical macroeconomic governance activity) into governance efficacy.

Second, from the perspective of framework and content, the Five-Year Plan is the "blueprint" and "roadmap" for China's economic and social development under the Party's leadership. It serves as an important bridge for transforming the Party’s propositions into the will of the state and provides a systematic design for the process of transforming the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work into governance efficacy. It provides a scientific path for enhancing the efficacy of the Party's leadership; that is to say, the Party's total leadership over economic work is implemented through the Five-Year Plan. The Five-Year Plan covers many fields centered on economic governance, and each specific field involves diverse governance subjects under the Party's leadership, such as administrative, legislative, judicial, and market actors. The Five-Year Plan "embeds" and implements the leadership system of "exercising overall leadership and coordinating all parties" into every aspect of economic and social development, providing vast space for the operation and application of the Party’s leadership system over economic work. Only by forming a synergy of various governance forces under the Party's leadership can the Five-Year Plan be smoothly implemented; the Five-Year Plan is a project of systematic economic and social governance under the Party's leadership.

Third, from the perspective of execution, the implementation guarantee system of the Five-Year Plan fully utilizes and demonstrates the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership, providing clear expectations for the realization of planning goals. Based on the long-term practical exploration of continuous implementation of Five-Year Plans, we have continuously enriched and improved the implementation guarantee mechanism to further transform the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership over economic work into governance efficacy. The "institutional dividends" of the Party's leadership are thus more fully released. For example, the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan explicitly proposed to "integrate the Party's leadership into all fields and the entire process of plan implementation to ensure the implementation of the major decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee." This is specifically reflected in "giving full play to the leading and safeguarding role of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party, and integrating the improvement of the Party and state supervision systems into the implementation of the plan; and improving an organizational system that connects the higher and lower levels and executes forcefully, while enhancing the political and professional capabilities of leadership teams and officials at all levels to grasp reform, promote development, and maintain stability in line with the requirements of the New Era." At the same time, through long-term practice, the Five-Year Plan has gradually established and improved mechanisms for defining responsibilities, monitoring and evaluation, policy safeguards, and assessment and supervision during implementation. This further creatively transforms and refines the Party's leadership system into a series of concrete implementation measures, ensuring that the system of the Party’s leadership over economic work is comprehensively and rigorously manifested within the framework of the Five-Year Plan.

The above analysis describes the process, mechanism, and role of the Five-Year Plan in achieving the efficacy of Party leadership from the perspectives of formulation, content, and execution. It can be observed that, after long-term strategic practice, the Five-Year Plan has reached a state of increasing maturity. It coordinates both system-orientation and problem-orientation, closely and orderly linking the Party's leadership system with the governance of economic issues. It plans a rich and challenging governance "field" ^[6] for the application of the Party's leadership system, finds in Party leadership an important governance support for solving economic difficulties, and achieves a corresponding combination of the Party's leadership system and economic issues. It has thus become a "Chinese solution" for enhancing the efficacy of the Party's leadership over economic work. Furthermore, because the Five-Year Plan must be approved by the NPC before it can be launched and implemented, it can also be understood as a "compulsory" statutory method for transforming the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership into governance efficacy. This helps ensure the certainty and effectiveness of its implementation, thereby significantly enhancing the Party’s economic governance efficacy.

It should be particularly emphasized that the Five-Year Plan contains a series of scientific and specific economic governance methods. These methods enhance governance capacity and efficiency, making the comprehensive economic governance system—a paradigm with unique Chinese characteristics—more operational and effective, and ensuring a smoother transformation of the Party's leadership advantages into governance efficacy. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee put forward the general requirements for upholding and improving the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and promoting the modernization of China's system and capacity for governance, which includes "strengthening systemic governance, law-based governance, comprehensive governance, and source governance to better transform our country's institutional advantages into national governance efficacy." Systemic, law-based, comprehensive, and source governance (hereinafter "the four governances") are not only governance methods that suit China's national conditions but are also scientific summaries of the Party's century of successful governance practice and a full utilization of the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership. The framework, content, and implementation guarantee measures of the Five-Year Plan fully reflect the adherence to and integrated use of the requirements of the "four governances," thus making it the vehicle for realizing these governances. The widespread use of the "four governances" is an important sign of the increasing maturity of the Five-Year Plan. It should be noted that the application of the "four governances" shows distributional differences within the Five-Year Plan: some are applied across wide governance fields and many stages, while others are reflected in local fields and partial stages. In other words, the "four governances" have different functions and are in a state of dynamic change; for instance, the field of law-based governance has shown a trend of continuous expansion with the development of practice.

Among these, systemic governance requires the formation of a Chinese-path pattern of multi-party co-governance characterized by Party committee leadership, government responsibility, democratic consultation, social coordination, public participation, rule of law guarantees, and technological support. The Five-Year Plan adheres to the requirements of systemic governance, emphasizing that it "primarily elucidates national strategic intentions, clarifies the government's work priorities, and guides and regulates the behavior of market entities." For example, the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan states: "Adhere to placing the focus of economic development on the real economy, accelerate the building of a manufacturing power and a quality power, promote the deep integration of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, strengthen the supporting and leading role of infrastructure, and construct a modern industrial system with the coordinated development of the real economy, technological innovation, modern finance, and human resources." This is a scientific strategic decision made by our Party while keeping in mind the "two overall situations" ^[7]. Looking further, measures such as "implementing major technical equipment breakthrough projects, perfecting incentive and risk compensation mechanisms, promoting the demonstration and application of the first (set of) equipment, the first batch of materials, and the first version of software," "promoting the increase of capacity and efficiency of industrial land, and promoting new industrial land models," "optimizing the layout of regional industrial chains, guiding key links of industrial chains to remain within the country, and strengthening the capacity building of the central, western, and northeastern regions to undertake industrial transfers," and "standardizing and reducing logistics charges for ports, shipping, highways, and railways, and comprehensively cleaning up and standardizing enterprise-related charges"—all of these clarify government work priorities. Meanwhile, phrases such as "relying on industry-leading enterprises to increase efforts in tackling major products and key core technologies, and accelerating breakthroughs in engineering and industrialization" set requirements for market entities. These are concrete manifestations of transforming the Party's propositions into the will of the state and the action of the entire people. This effectively achieves the high degree of unity and consistency between upholding the Party's total leadership, letting the market play a decisive role in resource allocation, and ensuring the government plays its role better. This also means that the Party's leadership and long-term governance can fundamentally break through the dual dilemma of "government failure" and "market failure." It not only demonstrates the significant advantage of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics in "concentrating resources to accomplish major undertakings" ^[8] but also showcases the advantages of the socialist market economy system. The national Five-Year Plan achieves an organic combination of "vitality" and "synergy," as noted: "The 13 Five-Year Plans already implemented have had two impacts on China's economic and social development... Second, the degree of organization in China's economic and social development has significantly increased."

Law-based governance explicitly emphasizes that economic governance needs a legal basis, legal support, and legal protection, and that all entities participating in economic governance must have a rule-of-law mindset and awareness, with their behavior conforming to the norms and requirements of the rule of law. Through long-term practice, law-based governance has been deeply integrated into the Five-Year Plan. For example, previous plans have emphasized the "rules and procedures of deliberation and approval by the NPC before public implementation." In addition, requirements for law-based governance are frequently seen in the content of the plans, such as the 13th Five-Year Plan's proposal to "deepen reform in the field of intellectual property and strengthen judicial protection of intellectual property," and the 14th Five-Year Plan's requirements to "protect the property rights and innovation gains of entrepreneurs according to law... report the implementation status of the plan to the Standing Committee of the NPC according to procedure, and consciously accept the supervision of the NPC." The Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan also focused on law-based governance to propose a more systematic and long-term outlook: "Adhere to the principles of formulating and implementing plans according to law; institutionalize the regulations, requirements, and effective practices of the Party Central Committee and the State Council regarding the construction of a unified planning system and national development planning into legal forms; accelerate the introduction of the Development Planning Law; and strengthen the legal guarantee for the formulation and implementation of plans." These requirements aim to legalize the specific operation modes of the Party's leadership system contained within the Five-Year Plan, making the transformation of the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership over economic work into governance efficacy more certain and stable.

Comprehensive governance emphasizes the integrated use of means other than the law to conduct economic governance. With the improvement of the socialist market economy system, the Five-Year Plan has gradually begun to focus on using comprehensive governance means to stimulate market entities' motivation for high-quality development. Among these, economic incentives play an increasingly important role in effectively guiding the behavior of market entities. For example, the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan requires "establishing and improving an evaluation system and incentive mechanism consistent with scientific laws, implementing long-cycle evaluations for basic research... implementing more powerful inclusive policies such as the weighted pre-tax deduction of R&D expenses and tax incentives for high-tech enterprises... and building an income distribution mechanism that fully reflects the value of innovation factors such as knowledge and technology."

Finally, source governance clarifies the sequence of governance methods, emphasizing the need to treat both symptoms and root causes, with a focus on the latter.

"Addressing the root causes" emphasizes resolving problems thoroughly by eliminating their origins rather than merely alleviating symptoms; simultaneously, it focuses on establishing normative constraint mechanisms to prevent problems from recurring. Past Five-Year Plans have consistently attached great importance to exploring methods for governance at the source. This concept has been integrated throughout the Five-Year Plan outlines and their implementation processes, thereby further enhancing planning execution capabilities and more effectively assisting in the elevation of the Party’s leadership efficacy. Examples include the 13th Five-Year Plan’s emphasis on "improving competition policy, perfecting market competition rules, and implementing the fair competition review system," and the 14th Five-Year Plan’s requirement to "perfect the new-type whole-of-nation system under the conditions of a socialist market economy, win the battle for key core technologies, and improve the overall efficacy of the innovation chain." These planning contents and requirements are all dedicated to identifying causes at a deep level and breaking through difficult bottlenecks.

In summary, the substance and core of the Five-Year Plan lie in its status as a national governance system with unique Chinese characteristics (comprising the Party’s leadership system, governance methods, etc.). Its external manifestation or extension covers the governance content of the "Five-Sphere Integrated Plan" (such as governance goals, major projects, and macroeconomic policies). The combination of core and extension constitutes our country's national governance capacity. Practice has fully proved that as the basic method of the Party leading economic work, an economic governance system with Chinese characteristics, a systematic action plan for enhancing the Party’s leadership efficacy, an important vehicle for "China’s Governance," and a methodological system for economic governance, the Five-Year Plan’s compilation procedures, framework content, and execution support system have become increasingly mature. It comprehensively demonstrates the advantages of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and governing efficacy under the Party's leadership in "concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks," and serves as a concentrated embodiment of the strengths of the socialist institutional system with Chinese characteristics.

The Five-Year Plan has been continuously developed and improved by the Communist Party of China (CPC) through long-term governance practice; therefore, one should view this unique Chinese governance system and model through a developmental lens. Along with the evolution of China's developmental stages, changes in the domestic and international development environment, and the emergence of new contradictions and problems in governance, every consecutively implemented Five-Year Plan will face a new and complex environment. These factors place higher demands on national planning. How to scientifically and effectively "embed" the leadership system of the Party over economic work and deeply apply it throughout the "full life cycle" of the Five-Year Plan—while making discretionary choices and innovating governance methods in the process—still requires a scientific answer in the practice of implementing the forthcoming 15th Five-Year Plan. Adhering to upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground, while soundly perfecting national planning, is an inherent requirement for governing the country in the New Era. In short, we must take the practical conversion of the institutional advantages of the Party’s leadership over economic work into governing efficacy as our goal-orientation to scientifically compile and consecutively implement the 15th Five-Year Plan, providing a political guarantee for promoting the effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth of the economy during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

III. Scientifically Compiling and Consecutively Implementing the 15th Five-Year Plan to Effectively Convert the Institutional Advantages of the Party’s Leadership over Economic Work into Governing Efficacy

(1) Performing High-Quality Work in Compiling the 15th Five-Year Plan

Scientifically formulating Five-Year Plans is the systematic development and application of the advantages of the Party’s leadership system over economic work. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Formulating medium- and long-term plans to guide economic and social development is an important method for our Party to govern the country." The 15th Five-Year Plan period is a critical period for laying a solid foundation and exerting full force to basically achieve socialist modernization. The 15th Five-Year Plan is an important governance tool for fully, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the new development philosophy, accelerating the construction of a new development pattern, and solidly promoting high-quality development. It directly pertains to the modernization of China's economic governance capacity. To compile the 15th Five-Year Plan with high quality, efforts must be made to grasp general trends, adhere to positions, anchor key points, and highlight characteristics.

First, we must holistically grasp the stage-specific requirements of the 15th Five-Year Plan period and the impact of international developments on China. This is the basic prerequisite for scientifically formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan. "During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China's development environment faces profound and complex changes." We must scientifically grasp China's historical coordinates and the environment it faces, planning medium- and long-term programs and major strategies while keeping the "Two Overalls" ^[9] in mind. Against the historical backdrop of the accelerating evolution and deep interaction of the "Two Overalls," we must accurately grasp and actively adapt to the pulse and correct direction of world development. We should plan economic and social development for the 15th Five-Year Plan period with a broader international perspective and stronger historical and strategic initiative, compiling a major-country strategic system that matches China's status and developmental needs. We must build a national strategic capacity that uses the certainty of high-quality development to hedge against the uncertainty of drastic changes in the external environment, elevating China's status in major economic diplomacy and global governance participation, so that China's development becomes a "stabilizing anchor" for the world economy during this period of turbulent change.

Second, we must persist in the fundamental value orientation of being people-centered. This is the core essence and value destination of China's high-quality development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, as well as a basic principle for scientifically formulating the plan, helping to achieve a deep fusion of the plan's scientific nature and its orientation toward the people. Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics and a long-term historical process. From the 1st Five-Year Plan to the 14th Five-Year Plan, the consistent theme has been building China into a modern socialist country. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we must persist in doing our best within our means (尽力而为、量力而行 ^[10]), "adhering to the close integration of benefiting people's livelihoods with promoting consumption, and investing in physical assets with investing in people." We should focus on researching and launching a batch of livelihood policies and measures with strong equity and accessibility in areas such as promoting coordinated regional development, consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation, promoting comprehensive rural revitalization and urban-rural integration, and accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, striving to solve the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems (急难愁盼 ^[11]) of the masses. Furthermore, adhering to a people-centered value orientation also implies the persistent practice of whole-process people's democracy. In the process of compiling the plan, we must unify top-level design with seeking advice from the people (问计于民 ^[12]), extensively and deeply investigating public sentiment, listening to public voices, and pooling public wisdom through multiple channels and methods to promote democratic and scientific decision-making, continuously increasing the scientific nature and operability of the 15th Five-Year Plan.

Third, we must place the development of new quality productive forces according to local conditions in a more prominent strategic position. This is the strategic support for China's high-quality development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and the strategic fulcrum for scientific planning. Developing new quality productive forces is an inherent requirement and important focus for promoting high-quality development; it is a strategic choice to break through "bottleneck" ^[13] technologies and "severed chain" ^[14] links, seize the initiative for future development, and shape new advantages in international competition. All regions should strengthen research and exploration, deepening their understanding of the laws governing scientific and technological innovation, industrial innovation, development model innovation, institutional and linguistic mechanism innovation, and talent work mechanism innovation. Through the compilation of national and regional 15th Five-Year Plans, we must plan for new relations of production that are compatible with the development of new quality productive forces, clarify government priorities, and guide and regulate the behavior of market entities. Together, we should promote the leap-frog development of workers, means of labor, and objects of labor, along with their optimal combination, striving to open up a path of innovative breakthroughs based on local conditions and truly breaking away from traditional economic growth modes and productive force development paths.

Fourth, we must reflect regional characteristics while strengthening the unified planning system. This is an inherent requirement for holistically achieving the systematic and scientific nature of the 15th Five-Year Plan, as well as an objective requirement for medium- and long-term planning in a large country. We must strengthen global awareness and a systems perspective, fully implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s requirement to "determine goals and tasks and propose ideas and measures reasonably, field by field." We must persist in "optimizing regional economic layouts and promoting coordinated regional development," accelerating the planning of a national planning system led by national development plans, based on spatial planning, supported by sectoral and regional plans, and composed of national, provincial, and city/county-level plans—placing all types of planning onto "one single map." At the same time, regional plans must be accurately positioned within the national context, focusing on reflecting their own characteristics and leveraging comparative advantages to prevent disordered development and "involutionary" ^[15] competition. This will raise the overall level of scientific formulation for the 15th Five-Year Plan based on specialized and differentiated regional planning.

(2) Consecutively Implementing the 15th Five-Year Plan Effectively

As previously stated, the Five-Year Plan is a governance method with "mandatory" characteristics that transforms the institutional advantages of the Party's leadership into governing efficacy. This implies the certainty of the plan's execution and implementation, and consequently, the inevitability of the effective conversion of the Party’s leadership system over economic work into governing efficacy. However, history tells us that the implementation efficiency and effects of Five-Year Plans face various uncertain influences. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China's development environment faces profound and complex changes. China's development is in a period where strategic opportunities and risks/challenges coexist, and uncertain, unpredictable factors are increasing. "While fully affirming the achievements and experiences of China's compilation and implementation of Five-Year Plans, the academic community has also summarized many lessons, leading to gradually deepening understanding." To effectively implement the 15th Five-Year Plan, it is necessary to focus on the following aspects:

1. Further Perfecting the Implementation Mechanism of the 15th Five-Year Plan

The Party’s comprehensive leadership over the implementation of the plan must be strengthened. This is the fundamental guarantee for the effective implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan. Specific governance tasks within the plan cannot be separated from the Party's leadership, nor can the promotion of the plan's implementation. The key is to strengthen the Party's leadership throughout the entire process of implementation. First, we must strengthen the leadership of the Party Central Committee over major tasks within the plan, amplifying the role of the Party Central Committee's decision-making, deliberation, and coordination bodies. Closely integrating with the implementation process and requirements of the 15th Five-Year Plan, we must further soundly perfect the rigorous system of the Party's central, local, and primary-level organizations so that they are connected from top to bottom and execute with vigor, improving the mechanism for ensuring the implementation of the Party Central Committee’s major decisions and deployments. Second, centered on the implementation of the plan, we must further perfect the Party’s comprehensive leadership and the working systems of Party committees (and Party leadership groups) at all levels, ensuring the Party plays a leading role in various organizations such as the People's Congress, the government, the CPPCC, and enterprises. We must fully leverage its role in "coordinating all parties," fostering synergy in plan execution regarding the implementation of responsibilities, monitoring and evaluation, and policy support, while preventing and overcoming departmental interest tendencies to ensure consistency of action. Third, we must focus on the key difficulties in execution to improve the Party’s governing capacity and leadership level, especially adhering to problem-orientation and seizing key links to soundly perfect decision-making mechanisms, strengthening investigation, research, scientific demonstration, and risk assessment for major decisions. Fourth, we must adhere to the Party's organizational line for the New Era, fully utilizing the monitoring and evaluation results of plan implementation to strengthen cadre assessment, and further selecting the virtuous and capable (选贤任能 ^[16]) in a scientific and precise manner.

The responsibilities for implementation must be strictly enforced. This is the key to consecutively implementing the 15th Five-Year Plan effectively. After decades of exploration, China has formed a planning combination model of "three levels and four categories." As a systematic project of national governance, the implementation process of the Five-Year Plan inevitably involves various subjects such as central and local governments, as well as the government and the market. Therefore, it is necessary to "concentrate resources to accomplish major tasks" under the premise of clarifying the responsibilities of all parties. This should primarily follow the vertical division of powers and duties between the central and local levels. Based on the principle of "letting the market play the decisive role in resource allocation while better leveraging the role of the government, forming an economic order that is both 'dynamic' and 'under control,'" we must clarify the attribution of horizontal and vertical responsibilities, specifying the task lists, timetables, and priorities of plan implementation—assigning responsibilities to specific posts, positions, and tasks. We should also explore deepening the role of the whole-process people’s democracy system in the implementation phase, further clarifying and strengthening the responsibilities of the People's Congress and the CPPCC.

Monitoring and evaluation of implementation must be strengthened. This is an important means for the effective implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan. Currently and for some time to come, the foundation for the continued recovery and improvement of China's economy needs to be further consolidated. The impact of external shocks continues, and the uncertainty of economic operations remains high. The implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan faces significant pressure. We must strengthen tracking and monitoring (such as annual monitoring and mid-term evaluations), using evaluation results to decide whether to adjust or optimize the plan and to propose tasks and measures for better execution. At the same time, the "PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) Cycle" theory in quality management also requires strengthening monitoring and evaluation to timely and accurately grasp the difficulties and challenges faced by implementation. Based on this, we must strengthen measures and apply categorized policies: for areas where progress is ahead of schedule, faster than expected, or basically in line with expectations, we must continue to consolidate and expand existing achievements to prevent backsliding or rebound; for relevant work lagging behind schedule, we must optimize and adjust policies and increase efforts to tackle key problems.

Consecutively implement the... [Text ends here in original]

The "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" also cannot dispense with incentive and restraint mechanisms. Only robust and complete incentive and restraint mechanisms can ensure that the responsibilities of all parties within the plan are "brought to ground," so that the "behavior of the subjects of practice becomes more standardized, making the advancement of the process more efficient, and the creativity of the subjects of practice is better utilized, making the results of the process more effective." The value of the aforementioned monitoring and evaluation is not limited merely to further improving the plan and related policies; it also provides a basis for the assessment of the relevant responsible subjects in the implementation of the plan. It is necessary to incorporate the implementation of the plan into inspections and tours ^[17], audit supervision, and the evaluation of leadership teams and cadres, thereby strengthening the power of plan execution.

2. Driving the implementation of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" through governance in key and difficult areas

Economic work involves a multitude of tangled threads. One "must proceed from the overall strategic situation, grasp the principal contradiction ^[18], start by improving social psychological expectations and boosting development confidence, and seize major key links to perform work in a systematic and well-organized manner." ^[19] The process of governing difficult problems in the economic sphere is a systemic project that urgently requires strengthening the leadership of the Party. The governance of these problems serves as both a test and a trial of the effectiveness of the Party's leadership over economic work, becoming "external pressure" to promote the execution of the Party's leadership system, and more importantly, providing an opportunity and creating conditions to enhance the Party's leadership efficacy. Furthermore, the Party's governance experience in key and difficult areas possesses significant demonstrative and spillover effects, and is naturally applicable to other aspects of economic work. To this end, we must focus on the key and difficult points of governance, continuously forming landmark achievements of the Party's leadership over economic governance while overcoming difficulties, and constantly optimizing the economic governance system under the Party's leadership.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Developing new quality productive forces requires certain endowment conditions; we must fully consider realistic feasibility. The 'Proposal' (稿) emphasizes developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions exactly to guide everyone to carry out work scientifically, rationally, and by seeking truth from facts, so as to prevent a headlong rush ^[20]." Developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions occupies a very prominent strategic position in the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" and has become the top priority for economic work in various regions. To achieve this, first, we must continuously optimize and fully utilize the decision-making mechanisms of local Party committees, strengthen investigation and research, scientific demonstration, and risk assessment for major decisions, and reinforce decision execution, evaluation, and supervision. We must earnestly start from reality, "establish the new before breaking the old" ^[21], adapt to local conditions, provide classified guidance, and selectively promote the development of new industries, new models, and new drivers. Second, we must ensure the effective execution of the system of the Party's comprehensive leadership, strengthening the Party’s comprehensive leadership over government departments, enterprises, and public institutions involved in scientific and technological innovation, industrial innovation, development model innovation (green development), as well as innovations in the economic system, scientific and technological system, and personnel work mechanisms. This will enhance the synergy between relevant departments, coordinating the "visible hand" with the "invisible hand," and thereby strengthening the governance capacity to "concentrate resources to accomplish great undertakings" ^[22] under market economy conditions. Third, we must be adept at utilizing incentive mechanisms for taking responsibility and taking action ^[23], promoting leading cadres at all levels to enhance their ability to learn, their capacity for political leadership, reform and innovation, scientific development, law-based governance, mass work, rigorous implementation, and risk management, so as to overcome difficulties in developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions.

3. Improving the implementation efficiency of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" by coordinating economic governance, reform, and policy

The Five-Year Plan is a "collection" of governance tasks, a plan for reform, and a clarification of policy instruments. Governance, reform, and policy are integrated and closely related; governance tasks, the deepening of reform, and policy arrangements must be "deployed together." The Five-Year Plan coordinates governance, reform, and policy, unifying them within development.

Reform is the powerful engine driving the implementation of the plan. The Five-Year Plan is both an important strategic tool for national development and a significant means of promoting reform. Only by continuously deepening reform can the governance goals in the plan be gradually realized. Deepening reform has become the guiding ideology or basic principle of successive Five-Year Plans; focusing on using reform methods to resolve development difficulties has become an important characteristic of the Five-Year Plan, and every new Five-Year Plan serves as a "mobilization order" for reform. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee deployed over 300 systemic reform tasks driven by economic system reform, clearly stating they are to be completed by 2029—the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. This means there will inevitably be deep interaction between the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" and institutional reform. Persisting in comprehensively deepening reform has become one of the six major principles that must be followed for economic and social development during the "Fifteenth Five-Year Period."

At the same time, policy support for plan implementation must be strengthened as an important guarantee for the continuous and successful implementation of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan." The implementation of the plan clearly cannot proceed without policy support. Faced with a complex governance situation, in order to achieve the economic development goals of "seeking progress while maintaining stability" and "promoting stability through progress," employing a "combination punch" ^[24] of policies has become a basic requirement for macro-control. In the coming period, macro-policy orientations must be reasonably determined in accordance with the targets and tasks of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" and in combination with the economic development situation. Particular attention should be paid to strengthening the coordination and cooperation of fiscal, monetary, employment, industrial, regional, trade, environmental protection, and regulatory policies, along with reform and opening-up measures, so as to amplify the policy effects.

About the Author: Wu Zhiyuan is the Vice President and a Professor at Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University. Source: Journal of China Jinggangshan Leadership Academy, Issue 6, 2025. Editor: Huihui