The PRC’s upcoming 15th 5-year plan (2026–31) is coming into focus at home and abroad. The government outline is expected at the Two Sessions in March 2026. Detailed sector plans affecting every nook and cranny of the economy and society will then be released over the following 18 months. Following the release of the 14th plan, we first catalogued 150 plans in 2022, with the number reaching some 250 by 2023.
A similar scope and scale can be expected from the 15th plan. Yet, for those willing to dig, the direction of planning has been clear well before the Party releases its proposal at the 4th Plenum on 20 October 2025.
Beijing plans ahead by soliciting research outputs with specific topics being made public in advance for public bidding. This analysis lists major 15th plan-related research topics emerging from the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), which stewards the Plan. The list proceeds in large part from the mid-term evaluation of the now-wrapped-up 14th plan. Major chokepoints of concern become priorities: scitech self-sufficiency, domestic consumption, green drivers, and public services, among others.
While certain core topics are directly commissioned to linked institutes and in-house research facilities, the broad range of issues publicised during 2024–25 shed light on the general direction of policy.
The brief also offers details on research institutes and personnel that eventually win the bid, denoting how Beijing leveraged specialist strengths to back top-down policy design.
5-year plan timeline
topics and researchers
NDRC’s Department of Development Strategies and Planning issued 74 research questions for bidding, with selected teams announced for 65. Among policy priorities, scitech (14) and macroeconomic policy (14) ranked highest, each covering about 19 percent of topics, followed by trade (11) and social policy (10), at roughly 15 percent and 14 percent. As the highest responsible unit for national socioeconomic planning within the NDRC, questions set and distributed by the Department are likely to express Beijing’s intended strategic focus.
research questions per sector
By location, three-quarters of assignments went to Beijing-based units (53). Zhejiang followed with eight, or 11 percent. Zhejiang University alone took four topics, matching Tsinghua’s share. The university has long been linked with Xi Jinping, who visited it more than 18 times during his four years in the province. The Zhejiang Development and Planning Institute, a bureau-level body under the provincial government, received three topics, equal to the entire Greater Bay Area allocation. It has advised on national and provincial planning since the 7th 5-year plan and recently on Yangtze Delta integration.
Universities (29) received some 41 percent of assignments, with nine going to Peking and Tsinghua. Yet, official research bodies still claimed a large share. Units within the NDRC secured 16 topics, or 30 percent. Two affiliated institutes were central: the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, with eight topics, and the State Information Centre, with five. The Academy advises on macro strategy, economic policy and industrial studies, while the Centre focuses on IT and data.
distribution among institutions
The total number of assignments (70) exceeds the distinct topics (65), as some were co-hosted. Coverage percentages are based on assignments rather than unique topics. With this overview of delegation patterns in place, the next section turns to sector-specific details.
geopolitics
Xi Jinping made it clear during an April local planning forum that national planning ought to balance measures for addressing both domestic and international concerns. With Xi announcing his Global Governance Initiative during the September SCO Plus Meeting, evaluating domestic capacities to respond to and drive external agendas is crucial if Beijing is to assume greater global responsibility.
trade
Sino-US trade disputes are one of the major factors hastening institutional opening. Given the likelihood of constant external shock, pundits urge market diversification; deeper engagement with BRI partners and ‘Global South’ countries is favoured. PRC exports need to move up the value chains. Speeding up the services trade build-up, with a focus on producer services, is required.
governance
Another way to counter external headwinds is to step up ‘dual circulation’, unifying domestic markets and rules while building up the private economy to back state initiatives. Confirming ownership rights, legal and state institutions remain crucial to laying the groundwork for market confidence.
macroeconomy
Having set the institutional stage, fiscal and monetary policy needs to back grand designs for structural change—surpassing ‘Western’ modes of counter-cyclical adjustment. Fiscally buffering both central and local policy, Beijing will roll out further taxation and budgeting reform, boosting its authority while expanding local fiscal capacity.
social policy
With PRC exports slowing, household consumption is deemed the most reliable long-run demand-side engine. Residents’ incomes need boosts; strategic investment is needed in public services. Makeovers for healthcare, elderly care and childcare industries help undergird future consumption while improving quality of life.
sci-tech
High-quality development is problematic without tech empowerment: innovation offers effective solutions and products across sectors, shoring up PRC competitiveness. Yet Beijing still faces bottlenecks in basic research, higher tech literacy, and taking patents to market. Today’s plans are disrupted by huge AI deployment nationwide, demanding better coordination to align its capabilities with consumption and welfare needs.
energy and environment
Hopes for consumption and supply-side upgrades both play roles under green transition imperatives. The carbon peaking deadline is set for 2030. Sectoral plans already ensure that the 15th plan will launch a dual control regime whose metrics are emissions intensities and absolute emissions caps. Sustainable use of resources is to scale up. Expanding inter-regional power grid connectivity and build-up of the marine economy are cases in point.
agriculture
Upgraded tech capacity and social welfare designs intersect with central goals for revitalising rural communities while ensuring food security. Xi has called for a ‘holistic food’ approach to agriculture planning since 2017. Yet, pundits lament fragmented policy designs in envisioned food production arenas, along with low incentives for farmers to continue farming grain.
regional coordination
Regional plans tie these threads together, helping craft a big picture of economic engines, farmland areas, scitech clusters and logistic routes. In the near term, the PRC will face over 50 million projected rural migrants, new industrial models widening development gaps, and shifting regional dynamics. Western regions are now at the forefront of trade as the focus pivots to BRI partners and Central Asian states. Top-down coordination is needed to maximise growth without incurring imbalance, not to mention plans catering to local conditions.
a holistic strategy
Strategies discussed under each sector must be weighed in concert: each is a step in the grand plan towards the PRC’s second centenary. With basic socialist modernisation due in 2035, Beijing must at least
attain national per capita GDP on a par with moderately developed countries
upgrade industry with digitisation, urbanisation and ag modernisation
peak greenhouse gas emissions
Xi’s ‘new development concept’ is once again affirmed by Han Wenxiu 韩文秀 Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission. It specifies innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development as anchor points.
Internal debate on balancing consumption, innovation and state-led investments remains heated. Based on research results and bureaucratic feedback from early 2025, the NDRC will soon wrap up planning guidelines. Merging official with public opinion and further research, a proposed 15th 5-year plan should drop at the Party’s 20th Fourth Plenum on 20 October 2025.
policymakers
Yan Yilong | 鄢一龙 Tsinghua University Institute for Contemporary China Studies vice president
As a new growth cycle emerges, Yan frames the 15th 5-year plan in terms of ‘four news’
new industries, models and designs are rising, old drivers are fading: ‘Peak China‘ is a misnomer
‘new productive forces’ reshape the economy: AI is already remoulding sectors, outperforming legacy industries in quality and reliability
’new development vision’ is needed, raising living standards and spurring domestic consumption: demand must not be neglected
‘new development paradigm’—dual circulation. Here, exports of manufactured goods can be paired with producer services offered abroad, embedding China’s role in global supply and service chains
The ’996‘ work regime must be abandoned, insists Yan: leisure rights must be protected, to sustain vitality.
Renowned governance and planning expert Yan took a Tsinghua University PhD in management. Taking part in national and local planning, he has led the 12th and 13th research and evaluation processes under the NDRC.
Cui Youping 崔友平 | Central Academy of Party History and Literature professor
To reach the per capita GDP of moderately developed countries by 2035, the PRC must sustain annual growth above 4.5 percent. Yet, growth per se is shifting from speed to quality and sustainability. Tech innovation and industry upgrading are mandatory on the supply side. Beijing’s R&D outlay hit some 3 percent of GDP in 2024 and will keep rising, led by advanced chips, AI and new energy.
These breakthroughs are to be applied to industry: Digital, intelligent and green transition of traditional manufacturing, which still accounts for over 80 percent of output. On the demand side, reform pledges to boost consumption via fairer income distribution and bigger spending on elderly care, childcare and education. Services will ‘go global’ as part of the ‘high-level opening-up’ agenda, giving further support to BRI projects.
Sino-Marxist thought figurehead Cui directs the Central Academy of Party History and Literature’s fourth division. Having a research background in economics, Cui was the director of the Shandong Institute of Economics School of Economics, later becoming the University’s vice president. Since 2013, he has worked in central Party-state agencies, focusing on an outline of Xi Jinping Thought.