How China sets stage for strong start to its next Five-Year Plan, opens global opportunities

This year's Two Sessions carries added significance as it marks the inaugural year of China's 15th Five-Year Plan period, a crucial phase for the country's development through the latter part of this decade.

On Thursday morning, the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, opened its fourth session at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, one day after the country's top political advisory body opened its annual session.

Delivering a government work report at the opening meeting of the NPC session, Premier Li Qiang announced that China targets an economic growth of 4.5% to 5% in 2026 and will strive for better in practice.

"The conditions underpinning China's long-term growth and its underlying trend remain unchanged," Li said. "More and more, China is demonstrating the strengths of its system and the strengths it has as a big economy."

He called for efforts to tap up the country's strengths and respond to challenges, including those posed by rising geopolitical tensions, weak global economic growth and shocks to multilateralism and free trade, to open up more promising prospects for China's development.

A strong start enabled by planning ahead

As it embarks on the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), China's core strategic objective remains the building of a modern socialist country, a goal bolstered by its achievements of the past five years, particularly those from last year.

In 2025, in a sign of remarkable resilience, China's economy remained robust despite headwinds, achieving stable year-on-year GDP growth of 5% and making new and higher-quality progress across economic and social sectors.

The work report, for instance, listed numerous new advances China made in science and technology last year, highlighting how it led the way in the research, development, and application of artificial intelligence (AI), biomedicine, robotics, and quantum technology.

Its economic aggregate continued to scale new heights in 2025, exceeding 140 trillion yuan (about $20.22 trillion) for the first time, and meeting the development goal for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

During this period on the whole, the Chinese economy reached new heights, with an average annual growth of 5.4% in gross domestic product, well above the global average, according to Thursday's government work report.

Remarkably, new breakthroughs were achieved in technological and industrial innovation, said the report, adding that research and development spending nationwide increased by an annual average of 10% over the past five years.

The Stimson Center, a prominent Washington-based think tank, said in a January report that China's advantage in technological innovation is reinforced through "centralized coordination," in a nod to the virtues of its planning ahead.

"Beijing treats AI as infrastructure," said the center. "Through top-down industrial policy and deep integration of design and production, China has rapidly deployed AI across manufacturing, ports, power grids, hospitals, and consumer products."

A dose of confidence that offers global opportunities

In global context, China's 5% growth rate in 2025 contributed an estimated 30% to global expansion. As the world's second-largest economy, it now generates approximately one-sixth of the total global GDP, and becomes a major trading partner for more than 150 countries and regions.

In an era defined by global uncertainty and prevailing short-termism, China's 15th FYP, a draft outline of which was submitted to the NPC session for review on Thursday, continues to provide a rare degree of strategic confidence and consistency.

Over the next five years, China expects to keep its GDP growth within an appropriate range, which will lay a solid foundation for achieving the goal of doubling China's 2020 per capita GDP by 2035 to reach the level of a moderately developed country, the government work report said.

To ensure effective implementation of the objectives and tasks of the 15th FYP, China proposes a total of 109 major projects in six areas, ranging from steering the development of new quality productive forces to ensuring and improving public well-being, the report said.

To deepen its integration with the global economy, China pledges to continue to expand opening up, stabilize foreign trade and optimize its structure, broaden two-way investment cooperation and advance the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Efforts will be made to expand market access and open up more areas, particularly in the services sector, according to the report. China will continue to be fully engaged in reform of WTO and safeguard and develop open world economy, it said.

China's Two Sessions 2026 marks a "watershed" moment for the global economy, geo-strategic analyst Imran Khalid said in an op-ed for Eurasia Review.

As China transitions to a consumption-driven model, it offers a different kind of opportunity for the global economy, he said. "For the Global South, China is no longer just a buyer of raw commodities; it is becoming a critical partner in digital infrastructure and green energy."

A stable China, he wrote, is a necessary anchor for a global economy that is currently searching for a new engine of growth.