Under China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, the coming period will be crucial for consolidating foundations and achieving socialist modernization. The country aims to leverage four key advantages: its institutional strengths, its vast domestic market, its complete industrial system and its abundant human resources.
The fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing recently. The meeting set forth a comprehensive blueprint for China’s economic and social development in the coming stage — the 15th Five-Year Plan. The session presented China’s road map for addressing global geopolitical competition from multiple dimensions: strengthening the real economy, advancing technological self-reliance, promoting demand-driven growth, expanding institutional opening and ensuring security alongside a green transition.
Following closely on the heels of the session, China and the United States held their fifth round of economic and trade consultations in Malaysia. And then, on Oct. 30, Chinese and U.S. leaders attended the APEC Summit in South Korea. This temporal and spatial overlap is no coincidence. It reflects China’s strategic initiative on pursuing high-quality development while proactively shaping the rhythm of international affairs and responding with composure.
Strategic blueprint for China’s economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period
According to the communique adopted at the fourth plenary session, the CPC Central Committee defines this period as a “crucial phase for consolidating foundations and launching full-scale efforts to basically achieve socialist modernization.” China aims to leverage four key advantages: its institutional strengths, its vast domestic market, its complete industrial system and its abundant human resources.
In terms of industrial structure and manufacturing upgrading, the session emphasized the need to focus economic development on the real economy, maintain a reasonable share of manufacturing in the national economy and build a modernized industrial system with advanced manufacturing as its backbone. It called for optimizing and upgrading traditional industries while cultivating and expanding emerging sectors. This indicates China’s ongoing transition from an extensive, quantity-driven model toward high-quality growth characterized by “reasonable quantitative expansion and effective qualitative improvement.”
In areas such as equipment manufacturing, advanced materials, automobiles and new energy, China will pursue breakthroughs in advanced manufacturing, while traditional industries will be modernized through digitalization, greening and integration. Maintaining a substantial manufacturing base is not only essential for economic stability but also for safeguarding national strategic security and industrial competitiveness. This reflects China’s greater focus on “irreplaceability” and “independent control” in industrial and supply chains, thereby enhancing resilience and bargaining power in future Sino-U.S. negotiations. Even if the United States promotes reshoring or supply-chain restructuring, it will be difficult to substantially weaken China’s manufacturing competitiveness through decoupling alone.
Regarding technological innovation and self-reliance, the plenary session urged China to “seize the historic opportunities of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation” and to “strengthen original innovation and research in key core technologies” to elevate scientific and technological self-reliance and strength to a national strategic priority. The communique called for comprehensively enhancing indigenous innovation capabilities and seizing the commanding heights of global science and technology.
At the policy level, this entails reinforcing national strategic scientific and technological forces; integrating education, science and talent development; empowering enterprises as innovation leaders; and improving R&D mechanisms. While external cooperation continues, China will place greater emphasis on security and autonomy, focusing on domestic substitution and the localization of key technologies. In Sino-U.S. negotiations, if Washington continues to use technology blockades or export controls in areas such as semiconductors, AI, quantum computing or biomedicine, China can be expected to respond by deepening autonomous innovation and strengthening domestic circulation. This will also bolster China’s influence over global technology standards and industrial ecosystems.
Notably, investment in technology is poised to become a new growth engine for China. At a news conference, Zheng Shanjie, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the 15th Five-Year Plan envisions building new pillar industries and accelerating the formation of strategic industrial clusters in new energy, new materials, aerospace and the low-altitude economy. And it is expected to create multi-trillion-yuan markets. The plan also calls for early deployment in future industries such as quantum technology, hydrogen energy and nuclear fusion, aiming to build “another high-tech China” within the next decade as a new engine for sustainable growth.
Regarding domestic demand and supply-side adjustment, the communique advocated “new demand driving new supply, and new supply creating new demand” — fostering positive interaction between consumption and investment to advance a development model led by domestic circulation. Policies will prioritize consumption upgrading, service-sector expansion and investment in quality productive forces, new infrastructure and green industries. Supply-side reforms will shift from overcapacity reduction and deleveraging to “optimizing factor allocation and improving total-factor productivity.” This reflects China’s intent to reduce reliance on external demand and to mitigate its vulnerability to trade pressure while expanding space for liberalization in services and consumer-goods sectors.
On institutional opening and reform, the communique emphasized the guiding role of economic reform and called for “steadily expanding institutional opening and safeguarding the multilateral trading system.” China will promote the decisive role of the market in resource allocation while ensuring effective government regulation, enhancing property rights protection, credit systems and factor-market mechanisms. The focus will shift from tariff reductions toward rule alignment, standards recognition and service-trade liberalization, signaling a transition from traditional trade talks to institutional-rule negotiations. By engaging in WTO reform and regional frameworks like the RCEP, CPTPP and DEPA, China aims to “offset rule pressure with institutional confidence” to strengthen both its openness and negotiation leverage.
On security and green transition, the session highlighted green development as a pillar of modernization. It urged the acceleration of new-energy systems and steady progress toward carbon peaking and neutrality. This demonstrates China’s determination to pursue balanced progress in the economic, environmental and security dimensions. In Sino-U.S. talks, green cooperation — those involving clean energy, carbon trading and climate finance — may become a new avenue for constructive engagement.
Key challenges in current Sino-U.S. economic and trade negotiations
Vice Premier He Lifeng led China’s delegation to Malaysia from Oct. 24 to 27 for the fifth round of Sino-U.S. consultations, one of the most complex rounds in recent years. It involved the intersection of technology, resources and institutional frameworks. The main challenges are:
• Technology exports and supply-chain control. The United States continues expanding its entity lists to restrict Chinese access to advanced software and equipment across industries, from electronics to aerospace, directly touching China’s core concerns over technology sovereignty and industrial security.
• Resource and supply-chain security. Washington views China’s management of rare earths and key minerals as “strategic weaponization,” and has urged Beijing to loosen export controls and enhance transparency. This extends beyond tariffs into deeper technological and military dimensions.
• Tariffs, trade balance, and market access. The U.S. focuses on the bilateral trade deficit and domestic employment, pressing China to open markets for American agricultural products, services and consumer goods. While China remains open to expanding access in some areas, it must balance this with its goals of demand expansion and industrial autonomy.
• Decoupling and industrial-chain reconfiguration. The U.S. increasingly seeks to reconfigure value chains by compelling structural concessions — for example, by demanding control over U.S.-related tech operations such as TikTok or restricting U.S. companies’ participation in high-end Chinese manufacturing. Such moves threaten China’s industrial base and global competitiveness.
Overall, these negotiations reflect structural and systemic contradictions — a contest over strategic, technological and institutional domains, rather than mere tariffs or deficit numbers. China aims to ease external tensions while firmly safeguarding the industrial, technological and security bottom lines established under its national development strategy.
Outlook and strategic response
Guided by its 15th Five-Year Plan and 2035 Vision, China’s negotiation posture is expected to center on steady institutional opening-up, independent innovation and firm defense of security red lines:
• It will maintain pragmatic flexibility in non-core areas, perhaps opening limited space in sectors of low sensitivity — such as consumer goods, services and standards alignment — to demonstrate sincerity and expand negotiation room under the principles of reciprocity, verifiability and reversibility.
• It will remain firm in core areas, upholding its bottom lines and accelerating its strategic capabilities in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, aerospace and resource security. If faced with intensified U.S. blockades, it will respond by strengthening R&D, diversifying markets and deepening domestic circulation to enhance resilience rather than yield under pressure.
• It will continue to expand institutional openness and its participation in rule-making. It will continue to advance institutional reform, safeguard the multilateral trading system and seek equality in global rule-making. Active participation in RCEP, ASEAN, and EU cooperation will expand its negotiation leverage.
• It will promote risk prevention and security modernization. The fourth plenary session’s emphasis on modernizing national security and defense underscores China’s determination to define clear boundaries. Sovereignty and security are not negotiable under external pressure.
Conclusion
The “Recommendations of the CPC Central Committee for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan,” which were adopted at the fourth plenary session, reflect China’s guiding principles of openness, rationality and constructiveness in developing its economic and trade relations with the United States.
China stands ready to advance mutual openness through its own reforms, to promote shared prosperity through peaceful development and to resolve differences through dialogue rather than confrontation. It calls on the international community to replace misunderstanding with communication and to substitute confrontation with cooperation. It seeks to promote an open, inclusive and win-win multipolar world order.
