15th Five-Year Plan

A preliminary study for the plan by the National Development and Reform Commission took place on 17 and 18 December 2023.^[1][2] According to Arthur Kroeber, speeches before drafting the new plan emphasized new quality productive forces, disruptive innovation, and a new national system for coordination.^[3]

The fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, held on 20 to 23 October 2025, focused on assessing the previous 14th Five-Year Plan and considered the proposed 15th five-year plan.^[4][5][6] On 24 October 2025, Premier Li Qiang chaired a special meeting on the preparation of the outline of the 15th Five-Year plan, with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang being present.^[7] On 3 November 2025, CCP General Office Director Cai Qi published an opinion piece in the People's Daily, where he stressed the "extreme importance of exercising full and rigorous party self-governance to achieve the economic and social development goals of the 15th five-year plan period".^[8]

On 27 February 2026, the CCP Politburo held a meeting to discuss the draft outline of the plan, which the State Council intended to submit to the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress for review.^[9] The National People's Congress subsequently reviewed the draft outline.^[10][11] It was approved by the NPC on 12 March 2026.^[12]

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The plan seeks to achieve basic socialist modernization.^[12] It has six main principles "upholding the party's overall leadership; putting people first; ensuring high quality development; upholding comprehensive and in-depth reform; implementing state market balance to form an economic order that is 'flexible' and 'well managed'; and balancing security and development."^[10] This means pursuing high-quality development over pure growth. This development can be measured through labor a and capital productivity.^[13] For the period, 4.5-5% gross domestic product growth is expected.^[12] Compared to the 14th Five-Year Plan, the 15-5 puts more emphasis on supporting businesses and less on supporting an equal distribution of wealth.^[10][13]

15-5 highlights a need to secure the critical supply chains^[14] for products with both civil and military applications.^[15] The central committee has stated that China must "maintain a reasonable proportion of manufacturing" and support "optimizing and upgrading traditional industries". Xi Jinping stated, "real economy cannot be lost". These statements indicate that China's future economic planning will not disregard the manufacturing sector.^[10]

The 70 percent semiconductor self-sufficiency target established under Made in China 2025, a target China missed by roughly 50 points, has been quietly deleted from the 15th Five-Year Plan and replaced with a deployment metric: digital economy value-added at 12.5 percent of GDP by 2030. Beijing is no longer measuring success by how many chips it produces. It is measuring success by how deeply computing infrastructure penetrates the economy.^[16]

Green technologies such as solar power and electric vehicles, and the accompanying rare-earth supply chains have been successful in China. In 15–5, Beijing aims to support similar policies for advanced semiconductors, biotechnology, and quantum technology.^[10]

Other efforts focus on improving China's financial strength. Reforms intended to achieve this goal include "advancing the Chinese currency's internationalization, pursuing greater openness of the capital account, and building a homegrown, risk-controllable cross-border renminbi payment system."^[17] The plan encourages adoption of more flexible regulations.^[14]

Another aspect of the 15-5 is an emphasis on improving social support systems for vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities. One example of this initiative is the opening of a "silent café" that employs deaf workers inside a government office in Huai'an.^[18]

Key indicators

The following targets were set under the plan:^[13]

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Key indicators of economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period

Category	Index	Attributive	2025 Baseline	2030 Goal
Economic development	GDP growth	Indicative	—	Maintain in a reasonable range
	Labor productivity growth	Indicative	—	Higher than GDP growth
	Urbanization rate of permanent residents (%)	Indicative	67.9	71
Innovation	Average annual R&D expenditure growth (%)	Indicative	—	7.1
	High-value innovation patents per 10,000 people	Indicative	15.3	>22
	Share of value added of core digital economy industries in GDP (%)	Indicative	10.2	12.5
People's livelihood and welfare	Surveyed urban unemployment rate (%)	Indicative	5.2	<5.5
	Growth of per capita disposable income (%)	Indicative	—	In line with GDP growth
	Average years of schooling of working-age population	Binding	11.3	11.7
	Licensed physicians per 1,000 people	Indicative	3.2	3.7
	Registered nurses per 1,000 people	Indicative	3.9	5.1
	Share of nursing-type beds in elderly care institutions (%)	Indicative	62	73
	Increase in childcare enrolment rate for children under 3	Indicative	—	+6%
	Life expectancy	Indicative	78.6	80
Green ecology	Reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP	Binding	—	-17%
	Share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption (%)	Binding	20.8	25
	PM2.5 concentration in prefecture-level and above cities (pg/m3)	Binding	29.8	<27
	Share of surface water reaching Grade III or above (%)	Binding	83	85
	Forest coverage rate (%)	Binding	24.1	25.8
Security	Comprehensive grain production capacity (million jin)	Binding	1.39	>1.45
	Total energy production capacity (billion tons of standard coal)	Binding	4.8	5.8

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• Five-year plans of China