Construction workers reinforce a bridge. Maintaining stable growth, promoting ecological progress and improving the public's quality of life are major highlights of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which was approved at the fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

The fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee concluded on Oct. 29 in Beijing. Scholars praised the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) for China's economic and social development, which was approved at the meeting.

“The 13th Five-Year Plan reveals China’s ambition to become a strong world power, maps out China’s development blueprint and sends signals of mutually beneficial cooperation, showing to the world the country’s firm confidence in maintaining stable development,” said Sheng Bin, a professor from the Nankai Institute of International Economics.
 

The 13th five-year period will be a crucial juncture in the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation as China aims to avoid the “middle income trap,” advance to a higher level of development and achieve a comprehensively prosperous society. To this end, it is fundamental for China to make sense of, usher in and adapt itself to the "new normal" to maintain sustainable, healthy economic and social development in the future, scholars said.
 

Cheng Enfu, a CASS Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), predicted that China’s economy will make substantial progress in a number of areas during the next five years.
 

The accelerated construction of an open economic system will grant China the initiative in economic development and international competition. Quickening the implementation of innovation-driven development strategies will create a new engine for economic growth, employment and entrepreneurship. New poles of economic growth are planned, including “the Belt and Road initiative,” the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. And the modernization of the new model of agriculture with Chinese characteristics will provide strong backing for sustainable, healthy development, Cheng said.
 

“Under the new normal, the general trend will remain unchanged that Chinese economy will advance amid stability,” he added.

In the 13th Five-Year Plan, the importance of promoting ecological progress is emphasized to an unprecedented degree.
 

Lü Zhongmei, deputy director of the Committee for Social and Legal Affairs at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said that the goal of building a comprehensively prosperous society is to finish the transformation of Chinese civilization and achieve sustainable development.
Modern civilization should be a “green civilization” built upon concepts of sustainable development, and the market economy should be a “green economy.” The key is to abandon the unsustainable model, which is characterized by an overreliance on investment, depletion of natural resources, high consumption and excess pollution, Lü said.

“People-oriented development is really a highlight of the 13th Five-Year Plan,” Cheng said, adding that improving the public’s quality of life is both the starting point and end result of development.
 

Economic indicators are not the only gauge of a comprehensively prosperous society. To realize inclusive development based on social laws, China must devote all efforts to addressing issues that affect the public the most, such as education, employment, income, social security and health care, Cheng said.

Xie Chuntao, director of the Party History Teaching and Research Department at the Central Party School, emphasized the comprehensive aspect of the “comprehensively prosperous society,” which must cover all groups, regardless of region, community, social stratum and ethnic identity. We cannot afford to neglect peasants, the impoverished and the urban working class, he said.
 

China today is close to the center of the world stage as never before. Each of its moves is influencing the world. Xie said that the 13th Five-Year Plan is not only of extraordinary significance to socialist China’s national rejuvenation but will also have profound worldwide repercussions.
 

He took poverty alleviation as an example. By 2020, more than 70 million poor people in China will shake off poverty according to the current Chinese standards, which will be a huge contribution to the world’s poverty reduction cause.
 

Sheng said that with the advancement of the new five-year plan, China will step closer to becoming a strong world power. “This will undoubtedly produce important improvements to the world economic pattern,” he said.

According to his analysis, innovation-driven strategies like “Made in China 2025” and “Internet Plus” will facilitate industrial and technological transformation and upgrading while enhancing the quality, brand and technological value of Chinese export products and services, thereby generating substantial competition effects on other countries and regions.

Meanwhile, by maintaining stable, innovation-driven, sustainable, balanced, inclusive and open growth, China will continue to inject sustaining power into the global economy from the supply and demand sides, he said.
 

In addition, with the internationalization of RMB, the acceleration of enterprises’ efforts to go global and the promotion of new initiatives for international economic cooperation, such as “the Belt and Road” initiative, the BRICS Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, China will actively propel and take part in the reform of world economic governance and supply the world, particularly the majority of developing countries, with more beneficial substantive and institutional public goods, Sheng said.

Zhong Zhe is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.