For four days, the most powerful people of the second world power have met in a hotel west of Beijing to decide the future of the country. Although the hermetic inner doors of Chinese politics were closed again. It is not known whether there have been internal disagreements in the debates. And only a few calculated images have transcended. The conclave has been held in a large room to house the 364 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the decision-making body within a party that has 89 million members. If the CCP were a country, it would be the seventeenth most populous in the world. On the scale it would go just behind the Democratic Republic of the Congo and ahead of Germany.
This week, led by President Xi Jinping, Chinese politicians have drafted the XIV Five-Year Plan, which will mark the rumbo of the economy until 2025. Although the novelty in the most important economic meeting of the year has been that the development route of the Asian giant has also been traced for the next 15 years. This had never happened in the meetings to draw up the five-year plans.
Then, in 2035, as agreed at the meeting, China will achieve modern socialism. And at the forefront of development will likely be Xi Jinping, who has strengthened his absolute power over China, and who will extend his political dominance to become a president for life. Xi, according to the official summary of the conclave written by the public news agency, is the “chief navigator and helmsman” who will propel the Asian country into its new Great Leap Forward.
Ambitious long and short-term plans (technological advances to increase domestic consumption, improve trade, clean the atmosphere and defend the nation from external threats) that can only be implemented in a country governed by an authoritarian system that it guarantees political stability, since it is not allowed to question the decisions of the sole party that commands.
Daily plenary reports will not be approved and published until the National People’s Congress (the annual meeting of Parliament), which is usually held in March. Today, after all, has only been an aperitif of homeland propaganda a few days before his great rival, the United States, holds a presidential election. For now, only an outline has been offered to the public, through a statement and a press conference held this morning in Beijing, of a plan focused on high technology self-sufficiency and a shift towards the domestic market for not depending on growing uncertainty abroad.
Among the published objectives is to achieve sustained and healthy economic development between 2021-2025. Regarding GDP, Chinese leaders expect its value to exceed 100 trillion yuan (12.77 trillion euros), a slight increase compared to 2019 but which hinders the purpose of ending 2020, having doubled GDP in the last decade . To achieve this, the economy would need to grow 5.6% this year. It is true that, in these times of coronavirus, China’s economy is the only one that grows compared to the rest of the G-20 powers. GDP rose 4.9% in the third quarter of the year, but it is still several digits short of reaching its purpose. In a break with previous five-year plans, this time an annual growth target will not be included.
The meeting also spoke of the so-called “dual circulation”, a new form of development that takes the domestic market as its main pillar, while trying to benefit from globalization. It would be an inward economic shift to encourage home consumption, which is the source of 57.8% of the country’s wealth. A new approach, incentivized these months involuntarily because of the coronavirus, which seeks an economy based on self-sufficiency.
But for the new model to prosper, a series of reforms is required that increase family incomes. At this Friday’s press conference, Ning Jizhe, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that the government will increase the income of low-income groups and will expand the middle class during the period 2021-2025. Although it did not reveal more concrete details on how China would implement the dual circulation model.
Another key point is the objective of achieving technology self-sufficiency as a central element of modernization. The statement published after the leaders’ meeting points out that “technological self-sufficiency would provide strategic support for national development,” with the aim of achieving important advances in key technologies by 2035.
“Integrated into the five-year plan is a network of new technologies and financial reforms designed to transform manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and finance, driven by a national semiconductor industry that will challenge US dominance in the industry. China has already launched a set of new technologies that the West has not begun to implement, “reads an analysis in the Asia Times newspaper. “These include remote vital sign detection for epidemic control, predictive artificial intelligence algorithms to identify potential super-spreading events, digital payments (including an official digital currency) that will replace conventional banking and self-programming industrial robots that can design their own production processes “.
On the political side, it has transpired that China “will maintain the long-term stability” of its special administrative regions, such as Hong Kong and Macao. On Taiwan, the island with a young democracy that Beijing considers a fractious province, Chinese leaders say they will promote its reunification with the rest of the continent. In addition, national security will be strengthened and investment will be made to “build a thoroughly modern army by 2027” that is on par with that of the United States.
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