In the face of an increasingly turbulent world, China will employ “strategic proactiveness” as it addresses growing risks and challenges, senior officials said at a Friday press conference detailing the country’s priorities under its next five-year plan.
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The world’s second-largest economy will shift more attention to the development of its domestic market amid global uncertainty, focusing on the production of tangible goods and technological advancements to ensure growth “remains within a reasonable range”, the officials told the press the day after the conclusion of a major Communist Party conclave.
With the next half-decade regarded as a critical phase for the party to achieve its long-term benchmark of “basically realising socialist modernisation” by 2035, China will “take historical initiative” to ensure progress towards that goal, said Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the party’s economic affairs office.
“While the world is undergoing accelerated changes unseen in a century, with profound adjustments in the balance of international forces, China possesses many favourable factors for proactively managing the international space and shaping its external environment.”
The high-profile press conference – featuring representatives of state and party organs charged with policymaking for the economy, commerce, science and health, among others – came shortly after the fourth plenum of the party’s powerful Central Committee, where the country’s political heavyweights deliberated a draft for the 15th five-year plan under the stewardship of President Xi Jinping.
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Calling the periodic national blueprint a “political advantage” that other countries admire, the officials vowed to “take economic development as the central task”, a phrase signifying a firm pro-growth stance that was not used in the plan’s previous iteration.