Photo: VCG

 
China set its goals for economic and social development in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) on Thursday, including realizing healthy and continuous economic development; enhancing the country’s response to public emergencies; and enhancing progress on national defense and modernization of the country’s army. 

The communiqué of the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was released on Thursday.

The session adopted the CPC Central Committee's proposals for the formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035. 

For the 14th Five-Year Plan, China will realize sustainable and healthy development of the economy on the basis of noticeably enhancing the quality and efficiency of economic performance, give full play to the growth potentials, make the domestic market stronger, further optimize the economic structure and elevating innovation ability.

China will prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas, and fully advance rural vitalization. The foundation for agriculture needs to be more stable and coordination on urban and rural areas needs to be strengthened, the communiqué said. 

It vowed to make significant progress on the development of the modern economic system, and further improve the system of the socialist market economy.  

China will also look to elevate its social civilization. The country’s core socialist values should be deeply implanted inside people’s heart. The public’s quality in terms of morality, science and technology, as well as physics need to be improved.

In the 14th Five-Year Plan, China will maintain long-term prosperity and stability for Hong Kong and Macao, and promote the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Straits and reunification of the motherland, said the Communiqué.

China will also speed up its “dual circulation” strategy during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, it said.

China will become a strong country in culture, education, talent, sports and health. The well-rounded development of all people and social etiquette and civility will be significantly enhanced. China's cultural soft power will grow much stronger, the Communiqué said. 

The building of an ecological environment is also a target. The Communiqué said that protection trends of land and space will be been optimized, the allocation of energy resources will be more reasonable, utilization efficiency will be greatly improved, and the total discharge of major pollutants will continue to decrease.

It also highlighted the need to realize more numerous and higher quality employment for people in the next five years. It will synchronize the public’s increasing income with economic growth, and improve distribution patterns, according to the Communiqué. 

China’s health system will be further improved. The national administration systems will also be improved and the government role will be given full play.  

For the social governance level, China will deliver a better system to solve big risks and respond to emergency public events. The country’s response capacity of natural diseases needs to also be improved.

Finally, it also stressed the need to focus on China’s national defense and modernization of the country’s army.