China's 13th Five-Year Plan - Priorities, goals and opportunities

China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (FYP) focuses on ensuring China’s transition to a more open socialist market economy, participants heard during a Friends of Europe policy briefing in Brussels.

The 13th FYP reflects the ‘New Normal’ of “moderately high” but good quality and sustainable growth. “The ageing rate of China’s population is greater than in any other developing country,” said Cai Fang, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and member of the advisory board of the 13th FYP. “We haven’t gotten rich yet, and we are already old.”

Indeed, China’s ageing society should be looked at as a positive point, a sort of second demographic dividend of retirees driving a boom in the health and tourism industries. “There are many investment opportunities related to an ageing society. Opportunities that are open to all parties,” he added.

Opening up opportunities is one of the central ideas behind the 13th FYP, noted speaker Yao Zhizhong, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the CASS. “We aim to develop a new open society under the new FYP, and we will play by international rules,” he said.

Important steps have already been taken in this direction with the opening and subsequent expansion of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (SFTZ), wherein foreign investors can operate under the rules of free trade. “We hope to see more foreign investment in the SFTZ,” he said, “and we hope to see more opening up in the rest of China, especially in the health and service sectors.”