China's 13th Five-Year Plan: A Draft Proposal

Abstract

Despite over 35 years of reform, some things in China never change. Thus, regular Five-Year Plans are still being formulated to serve as guidelines for the leadership's economic development policy priorities. The first Five-Year Plan was released in 1953 and only during the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) was the planning process suspended. Since the 1950s, overall planning has been conducted under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP defines the goals to be reached and the guidelines to be followed. These are outlined in a draft document, which is formally confirmed at a subsequent spring meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC). In the period between the passing of the draft at a meeting of the CCP's central committee and the meeting of the NPC, there may be adjustments and concretizations, but these will not result in major changes. The first Five-Year Plan emphasized heavy-industrial development, and this trend continued through subsequent plans. By way of high investment rates and the price-scissors, which channeled resources from agriculture to industry, Chinese planners built an oversized heavyindustrial complex (Brodsgaard and Rutten 2015). Even after the decision was made to begin a new phase of reform and open door policies, the old pattern of pouring resources into heavy industry continued to dominate and investment kept increasing to reach record high levels of almost 50 per cent of GDP.