China Leadership Monitor

At the 5th plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the end of October 2020, Chinese leaders unveiled a new strategy for sustaining economic development during the next fifteen years.  General Secretary Xi Jinping was deeply involved in the formulation of the framework underpinning the new strategy. Although aspirational and lacking in specifics, China’s new economic strategy makes it clear that Beijing will be shifting the focus of its economy inward and achieving scientific and technological self-sufficiency to improve its national security and sustain growth.  Chinese leaders frame the rationale for this shift in terms of a response to radical and unfavorable changes in the external environment.  They also will rely on a new “whole-of-nation” system to mobilize resources to achieve their objectives.  The immediate political objective of issuing this economic blueprint seems to reassure the Chinese nation that the CCP has a plan to sustain its strategic competition with the U.S.