Ready To Share Development Dividends

The 14th National People’s Congress recently concluded its fourth session in Beijing, reviewing and approving the Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for National Economic and Social Development. The Outline sets 20 key targets for the next five years, including targets for GDP growth, the urbanisation rate, the growth rate of research and development spending across society, the growth of per capita disposable income, and the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP. 

It proposes 109 major projects across six areas: fostering new, high-quality productive forces; building a modern infrastructure system; promoting integrated urban and rural development; ensuring and improving people’s well-being; advancing the green and low-carbon transition; and safeguarding key areas. Together, these elements paint a magnificent picture of Chinese modernisation in the next five years. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will be a country of comprehensively deepening reform. China will continue to refine systems for property rights protection, market access, information disclosure, social credit, mergers and reorganisations, and market exit.

Orderly market system

China will break down local protectionism and market segmentation, and work to build a unified, open, competitive, and orderly market system, accelerating the creation of a unified national market. China will leverage the leading role of economic structural reform, adhere to the principle of combining an efficient market with a well-functioning government, strengthen coordination between fiscal and monetary policies, reinforce both counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, and implement more proactive macro policies. These efforts aim to ensure that personal income grows in step with economic growth, and that labor remuneration rises in tandem with productivity. 

Through comprehensively deepening reform, China will steer high-quality development and set a fine example of shared development and common prosperity. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will be an even more connected and opening-up country. China will accelerate high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, deepen collaboration on key economic corridors and pivotal ports, and ensure the smooth flow of multiple connectivity pathways across land, sea, air, and cyberspace. China will promote the orderly expansion of opening up in sectors such as telecommunications, the internet, education, culture, and health-care.

China will continue to successfully host major expositions, including the China International Import Expo, the China Import and Export Fair, and the China International Fair for Trade in Services; and develop the Hainan Free Trade Port to high standards, enhancing the quality and efficiency of foreign trade, and actively expanding high-standard opening up. China will channel foreign investment into the areas such as advanced manufacturing, modern services, high technology, energy conservation, and environmental protection. 

China will encourage foreign-invested enterprises to participate in industrial collaboration and support the rational and orderly cross-border deployment of industrial and supply chains. With an open mind as vast as the ocean, China will strengthen connectivity with the world, share its mega-market, and deepen global industrial and supply chain integration. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will be a country of sustained innovation and development. China will implement strategic deployments in science and technology, focusing on AI, quantum technology, biotechnology, and new energy. 

R&D spending across society will maintain an average annual growth rate of over 7 per cent, securing decisive breakthroughs in core technologies in key areas, and producing a number of major, original, and leading scientific and technological achievements. China will further advance the Digital China initiative, fully implement the “AI +” action plan, promote the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy, and enhance the digital and intelligent level of government governance. 

China will also foster a new paradigm for high-level scientific and technological opening-up and cooperation, build an open innovation ecosystem with global competitiveness, and support joint efforts with scientists and researchers worldwide to tackle fundamental and cutting-edge scientific questions, co-advancing global technological innovation. China will be a consistently stable and orderly country. It will continue to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world, and champion a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation, remaining a constructive force and serving as an anchor of stability in a world full of uncertainties. 

China will firmly support developing countries in safeguarding their national sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, will uphold the international rule of law, fairness, and justice, will oppose all unilateral acts, power politics and bullying, and push for a ceasefire and end hostilities, easing geopolitical tensions, and safeguarding world peace and stability. China will steadfastly uphold a fair and open international economic and trade order, oppose the indiscriminate imposition of tariffs and acts of decoupling and severing supply chains, firmly support trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and work to maintain the stability of international energy prices and keep global industrial and supply chains unhindered.

New opportunities 

Nepal successfully held the election of the House of Representatives, and a new government will be formed soon, bringing new opportunities for the country's development.  Nepali people aspire deeply to unlock growth potential through reform, share opportunities for cooperation through connectivity, achieve leapfrog development through innovation, and create a predictable internal and external environment through stability. As a friendly neighbour linked by mountains and rivers, China welcomes Nepal to share the development opportunities during the 15th Five-Year Plan.

China stands ready to enhance experience exchanges on governance, jointly advance high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, expand mutually beneficial cooperation in trade, investment, and infrastructure connectivity, continuously deepening the China-Nepal Strategic Partnership of Cooperation Featuring Ever-lasting Friendship for Development and Prosperity, and jointly building a China-Nepal community with a shared future.

(The author is the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Nepal.)