A Note on China's 12th Five-Year Plan: Content and Implications

Abstract

At the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) in March 2011, a new five-year plan was approved by the legislators. This is the 12th five-year plan in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The first five-year plan was introduced in 1953. Only during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) was the planning process suspended and substituted by campaign economics. Chinese five-year plans serve as a framework for overall planning and development. Although recent five-year plans carry few specific targets, they are important as expressions and indications of where the Chinese leadership would like to take China. They are the result of immense planning work involving thousands of planners, Party leaders as well as think-tanks and academics. In the process, extensive resources are mobilized by the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) and other planning institutions and the Party's politbureau regularly discusses the various drafts that emerge from the planning process. Work for the 12th Five-Year Plan started already in the second half of 2008 on the basis of a review of the achievements of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2011). The review concluded that the 11th Five-Year Plan had achieved its growth targets, but that economic restructuring was proceeding slowly. Following the evaluation of the previous plan, the NDRC identified 20 policy areas and organized thousands of experts, scholars and entrepreneurs to hold meetings and write reports to develop new ideas for the 12th Five-Year Plan. The process focused on developing objectives and goals for the direction of social and economic development (Hu 2011). Based on this research, the NDRC worked out an overall plan for the 12th Five-Year Plan with a focus on changing the economic development model. The concept was discussed at a subsequent politbureau meeting in February 2010. At the same time, the politbureau appointed the politbureau standing committee member and executive vice premier Li Keqiang to head a drafting group, which was entrusted with the task of drafting a proposal that could be presented to the Party's 5th Plenary Session in October 2010.