Global Times: New quality productive forces, new momentum
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan drives innovation, high-quality growth, and global cooperation for shared prosperity.
Beijing, China, Oct. 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which has drawn global attention, outlined multiple objectives for China's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30). I believe the country's next five-year plan will witness an acceleration of success achieved through fostering the high-quality development and new quality productive forces.
What I find admirable in the CPC's economic planning is the focus on the long-term objectives of the nation, such as the two centennial goals, with the intermediate goals of 2025 and 2035 as stepping stones. The five-year plans are the process of refinement and adjustment of the direction of the long-term development process to internal and external new realities.
The CPC Central Committee set the following major objectives for the 15th Five-Year Plan period - significant advancements in high-quality development; substantial improvements in scientific and technological self-reliance and strength; fresh breakthroughs in further deepening reform comprehensively; notable cultural and ethical progress across society; further improvements in quality of life; major new strides in advancing the Beautiful China Initiative; and further advances in strengthening the national security shield, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
The shift of China's economic growth model from high-quantity, low-end production to high-quality and high-tech productivity is increasingly evident in recent years. The country's emphasis on innovation as the most important factor in moving China forward leads to a new orientation in the entirety of the Chinese research and development (R&D) field, industrial modernization and innovation process, and an acceleration in science and technology areas of education to create the human resource base to make this revolutionary shift.
Today, China is the world leader in manufacturing and innovation in many sectors such as telecommunications, robotics, high-speed rail, space technology, clean technology, and artificial intelligence as demonstrated by DeepSeek.
The World Intellectual Property Organization's Global Innovation Index 2025 not only showed that China has risen to the 10th position for the first time, but also that the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou innovation cluster has become the world's leading innovation hub.
In the country's pursuit of high-quality development, the term "new quality productive forces" is grabbing the spotlight. The concept is a higher level of unprecedented integration of the industrial, technological, and scientific capabilities of a new quality into the productivity and livelihood of the Chinese people. It differs from previous ones in its emphasis on the interplay among high-technology, high-efficiency, and high-quality characters.
China has proven the principle of non-linearity in economic progress that is driven through constant revolutionary technological breakthroughs. The level of productivity tends to increase exponentially, as we see in robot-driven electric vehicle "dark plants" today where 800 vehicles are produced per day, translating into one vehicle per 1.8 minutes.
The combination of robotics, AI, precision tools, and highly skilled labor force transforms the industrial process in ways not imaginable before. I saw an implementation of this new concept firsthand in a plant for manufacturing autonomous small vehicles in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province in 2024.
There are two goals to be achieved here: First, the creation of whole new industries, and second, upgrading the traditional industrial base. This is not limited to manufacturing but extends to agriculture and green growth to promote a clean environment and eco-civilization.
It is interesting that the Chinese government is consistent in its view that development in different provinces within China in general should be tailored according to the needs, strengths, and potential of each. There should be no "one-size-fits-all" approach, because each region and each country have its own characteristics.
However, what can be universal in each case is the application of the new quality productive forces concept: That is introducing scientific and technological innovation into all parts of that specific society. China has applied this in its successful development process.
Developing countries should view this as a model and adapt it to their own conditions.
China's scientific and technological cooperation with the outside world is the total openness and shared benefit. All great powers and civilizations attract and assimilate new scientific and technological breakthroughs from outside to progress and prosper. Although it has risen to the ranks of the world leaders in manufacturing, China is still opening its enormous market for foreign corporations and its trade partners.
China is now sharing its own with other countries, especially through the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. By sharing the fruits of its progress, China is enabling others to rise and prosper, thus creating higher-quality markets and achieving common prosperity and win-win cooperation.
For example, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which I visited and studied, will move from a mere recipient of support and a mere bridge between wealthier industrial provinces of China and the Eurasian marketplace into a productive industrial and logistics hub servicing the regions to the West from its own productive capacity too.
It is my strong belief that China will race forward during the 15th Five-Year Plan period into the leadership of every possible science and technology field and probably break into new frontiers of science whether deep in the sea, high in the heavens, or inside the tiniest microorganism. At the same time, it will continue to refine and preserve its high cultural and civilizational standard.
All these achievements made in a peaceful manner will be of great importance for peace and prosperity in the world which is troubled by military and political conflicts, poverty, and environmental degradation.
The author is the vice chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden.
Source: Global Times:
Company: Global Times
Contact Person: Anna Li
Email: editor@globaltimes.com.cn
Website: https://globaltimes.cn
City: Beijing
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