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October 20, 2025
Starting from Monday (October 20), the Communist Party of China will hold the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee in Beijing for four consecutive days. This session is to review the “15th Five-Year Plan”, China's 15th “Five-Year Plan”, and discuss the economic development blueprint from 2026 to 2030. It is regarded as a vane for reviewing the direction of China's economy.
BBC Chinese interviewed scholars and analysts from different backgrounds to analyze the background of the “Five-Year Plan” and try to answer whether this is the central government's economic blueprint or a political tool? How Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping deploys his “security pattern” through “planning” responds to different dilemmas.
At the same time, attention was also focused on the personnel adjustments within the party revealed at the Fourth Plenary Session. It was originally speculated that the punishment of some high-level officials would be implemented during the session. It was finally announced before the meeting on October 17 that nine senior military officials, including He Weidong and Miao Hua, were expelled from the party and the military for serious violations of discipline and law.
Time to consider “planning”
Each Central Committee of the Communist Party of China usually holds about seven meetings within five years. According to the Party Constitution, the “Central Plenary Session” is held at least once a year. Generally speaking, the Communist Party of China is accustomed to reviewing the five-year plan at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and officially releasing it at next year’s National People’s Congress.
There have been speculations that the early review of the five-year plan at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is a breakthrough. It is probably related to the severe economic situation caused by the earthquake. Beijing cannot wait until next year to propose policy directions to rescue the economy.
Alexander Davey, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Europe, told BBC Chinese that the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee was inexplicably delayed due to different locations, resulting in the postponement of the CCP Plenary Session cycle.
According to the timetable of more than 40 years, the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is expected to be held exactly the year after the Party Congress, that is, in the autumn of 2023. It was eventually postponed by nearly a year to July last year. The “14th Five-Year Plan” will be completed this year and cannot be reviewed until the Fifth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2026.
In fact, the China Development and Reform Commission has launched preliminary research on the “15th Five-Year Plan” as early as the end of 2023; in July, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee decided to conduct research on the “15th Five-Year Plan” during the Central Plenary Session in October. The Politburo document pointed out that “development faces a complex situation, with policy opportunities and risks and four challenges coexisting, and uncertainty increases.”
By the end of September, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee released the summary of the meeting, which determined the date of the Fourth Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee. It also mentioned the six “persistences” during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period. It stressed that “upholding the party's comprehensive leadership” should run through “all aspects and the entire process,” and pointed out “a new security pattern and a new development pattern.”
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The CCP’s “Security Pattern”
Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York in the United States, analyzed to BBC Chinese that the guiding principle of the “15th Five-Year Plan” is to direct the “big security pattern” of the entire country to the “big picture of development”, which has the meaning of “political leadership”.
He said that in accordance with the thinking of “all leadership of the party”, “the economy is a collaborator and collaborator that serves the party's highest interests and goals.” The current economy does not have the power to bring a political crisis to Xi Jinping. He believes that this time the plan will have a very strong political color and is also a response to related crises.
Xia Ming pointed out that Xi Jinping has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2012 and will take office as the President of China next year. In the past, Li Keqiang of different factions led the economic policy and was more inclined to promote the economy through the market. Currently, Li Qiang, Premier of the State Council, and He Lifeng, Vice Premier in charge of the economy, are A close confidant of Xi Jinping is already halfway through the meeting and is familiar with various departments. Therefore, the “15th Five-Year Plan” proposed by him is the “first five-year plan for Xi Jinping's team to fully take charge of China's economy.” It is expected to be dominated by a mixed economy, which will integrate the economy into state-owned enterprises and have more state control.
On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, in 2021, Xi Jinping announced the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Subsequently, the Communist Party of China emphasized that it will use the three major plans of the “14th Five-Year Plan”, the “15th Five-Year Plan” and the “16th Five-Year Plan” to basically achieve socialist modernization by 2035. The “15th Five-Year Plan” has been described as a critical five-year link between the past and the future.
Xia Ming said that the so-called key figure Xi Jinping is currently in his third term. 2027 is an important time point. The Communist Party of China will hold its 21st Congress. The same year is also the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army. “If there is no achievement in both national reunification and economic well-off, then Xi Jinping will obviously not be able to enter his fourth term in 2027.”
Xia Ming believes that Xi Jinping is anxious about this, coupled with geopolitical insecurity, and Xi Jinping has “securitized” various affairs in the past few decades. National security is also based on economic security, which shows that the “10th Five-Year Plan” strategy will drive industries around defense industry, aerospace, chips and other military or technological fields, and will intensify global military competition internationally, leading to insecurity in neighboring countries and instability in the region. However, it can also maintain Xi Jinping's international strategic image and security, and at the same time “shock the Chinese people” throughout related developments.
Liu Ruishuo, a Hong Kong current affairs commentator on China-related affairs, believes that although the “Five-Year Plan” involves the manifestation of the power of the CCP and reflects the distribution of power among decision-makers, it focuses on economic planning. He also pointed out that in the context of increasing friction between China and the United States, the emphasis is on erasing the contradiction between China and the world on economic issues. The importance of the “Five-Year Plan” is getting stronger and stronger. “China, whether high-level or private, cares more about economic issues and people's livelihood issues than politics.”
However, Liu Ruishao said that Xi Jinping's power is still stable and there are currently no thorny political issues to argue about. He believes that the “15th Five-Year Plan” focuses on the economy. Even though the country is increasingly facing economic difficulties and public dissatisfaction has emerged, it has not yet approached the critical point of outbreak. Therefore, it is obvious that “the regime will not collapse” because the government will even use administrative dictatorship methods to implement policies or suppress opposition voices.
Play the video “Lazy Man's Bag: What is China's “Five-Year Plan”? 》, program length 7,2707:27Add text to the video,From the “1st Five-Year Plan” to the “14th Five-Year Plan”, China's “Five-Year Plan” system has gone through more than 70 years. What exactly is it?
The Soviet Union’s “Five-Year Plan”
The CCP began to implement its first plan in 1953, the fourth year after its founding. So far, it has compiled a total of fourteen five-year plans, which were interrupted from 1963 to 1965 due to economic adjustments. Starting in 2006, the “planning” work was changed to “planning” and remains so. The plan focuses on economic vision and development goals, covering China's major construction projects in the next five years, diversifying its productivity, etc.
Liu Ruishao explained that the “Five-Year Plan” was originally planned to be a top-down planned economy for China's economy every five years. However, because the plan could not adapt to the constantly changing economic conditions, it was renamed “Planning” and is relatively flexible and adjustable.
China’s official position is that the “Five-Year Plan” is the party’s way of governing the country. There are many articles on China’s internal interpretation of the plan, as well as many foreign scholars citing foreign scholars who pointed out that while China is formulating plans for the next generation, Western countries are planning for the next election, thus highlighting the advantages of the “Five-Year Plan”, which is difficult for the West to match.
“Five-Year Plan” has a strong political and economic style of the former Soviet Union.
Xu Chenggang, a senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Economics and Institutions at Stanford University, explained that the “Five-Year Plan” is definitely not the “industrial policy” mistakenly believed by the public, but comes from the Soviet Union and is part of the party's control of the national economy. It is based on the socialist system – that is, the party leadership believes that all important and key assets belong to the “state.”
“When the party and the country design and implement this thing, they serve the long-term strategy of the Chinese Communist Party,” Xu Chenggang said. He also pointed out that planning requires a large amount of capital investment, all of which are state funds. He gave an example that most of the current investment in the development of artificial intelligence is state funds.
Looking back on recent plans, the State Council announced a manufacturing industry policy called “Made in China 2025” in 2015, which was later included in the “13th Five-Year Plan”. Xu Chenggang pointed out that the country's situation is not in line with the market economy, but it needs to follow the pre-planned quantitative standards of the plan. The result of “Made in China 2025” will indeed allow China to control many global industrial chains. However, he said that when analyzing and evaluating the effectiveness of policies, they neglected the question of “how to make these things look like.” The focus was on the suppression of economic development or social welfare protection.
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Paradoxical economic solution
On the eve of the Fourth Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, Li Qiang took advantage of the symposium of experts and entrepreneurs on the economic situation and invited experts to “actively provide suggestions and suggestions for doing a good job in economic work and promoting the development of the 15th Five-Year Plan.” During this period, we must continue to work hard to expand domestic demand, strengthen the domestic cycle, and continuously form new growth points for expanding domestic demand.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) continued to fall.
Xu Chenggang analyzed that the negative growth recorded by the index shows that China's current deflation, which has lasted for more than two years, is a very serious economic crisis. He pointed out that when people expect prices to continue to fall, consumers or consumers may also choose to “hold money to buy. Even if you have money, try not to buy.” “No consumption or investment means insufficient domestic demand,” further exacerbating deflation.
He believes that the “10th Five-Year Plan” is likely to focus resources on developing technology because of the need to compete with the United States. However, when the national deficit is serious and local debts are severe, continuing to invest in technology will not promote economic growth, because the current problem is not “insufficient demand” but “insufficient supply”, which is also related to the development of high-end technology.
He said that China's investment plan and strategic layout, occupying part of the industrial chain, and demonstrating that it is technically capable, “but in fact it conflicts with its own economy.” “The system ruled by the Communist Party will never truly achieve its purpose of domestic demand.”
David from the Mercator China Institute analyzed that the “15th Five-Year Plan” will focus on “new productivity” and manufacturing as the driving force of economic growth; in addition, to deal with the technological “stuck” problem that the United States may impose on China, promoting domestic consumption by solving inequality problems will be the focus, and social governance will also be improved to maintain internal social stability, which will play an important role in the case of continued economic pressure.
He pointed out that planning does not necessarily strictly follow the economic blueprint, but is an important guidepost. A specific goal is about to be launched. If the plan mentions adjustment measures to boost the economy in the short term, it may mean that China will perform a more flexible and dialogue-oriented capital form on the international stage.
It is worth noting that after the Fourth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is held, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization will hold a summit in South Korea soon.
U.S. President Trump is expected to attend. He recently stated that he will meet with Xi Jinping locally within two weeks to determine that 100% tariffs are unsustainable.
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