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China’s 15th Five-Year Plan: What Foreign Founders Need to Know

Key takeaways from the official outline of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for foreign entrepreneurs setting up or running a company in China, covering strategic priorities, indicators, and major projects.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan: A Practical Guide for Foreign Founders

The official outline of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (the “Outline”) sets out the guiding principles, main objectives, strategic tasks, and major measures for economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. For foreign founders registering or operating a company in China, understanding these priorities helps align business plans with the policy environment.

Why the Five-Year Plan Matters for Your Business

China has implemented 14 five-year plans (including earlier plan types) since the founding of the People’s Republic. These plans translate high-level strategic visions into actionable roadmaps. The current plan is positioned as a crucial bridging period for building a solid foundation and making comprehensive efforts toward the goal of basically achieving socialist modernization by 2035. The 15th Five-Year Plan is the second of three five-year plans (the 14th, 15th, and 16th) intended to complete that 2035 goal.

For foreign founders, this means the policy focus will remain on areas such as key core technologies, a unified domestic market, green and low-carbon transition, and security capabilities in key sectors. These priorities can shape market access, compliance requirements, and incentive policies.

Four Guiding Themes

The Outline highlights four thematic priorities that will guide policy during the 15th Five-Year Plan period:

• Historical continuity: The plan emphasizes building on past achievements while addressing foundational issues that affect development and security. This includes tackling key core technologies, removing bottlenecks in the unified market, accelerating green transition, and strengthening security capabilities in key areas.
• High-quality development: The theme of high-quality development runs through all areas. The focus is on improving total factor productivity, increasing the contribution of technological progress and institutional innovation to growth, and fostering new comparative advantages. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and biomedicine are seen as offering historical opportunities.
• People-centered approach: The plan addresses demographic trends including aging, declining birth rates, and regional differentiation. It calls for expanding access to public services, promoting employment and income growth, and implementing practical livelihood projects in areas such as grassroots medical services and quality education.
• Systematic balance: The plan stresses comprehensive balance across domains, including coordinating domestic and international perspectives, development and security, and supply and demand. For foreign businesses, this implies attention to import-export balance, goods and services trade, and the interplay between attracting foreign investment and outbound investment.

Main Indicators: What They Signal

The Outline sets 20 main indicators across five categories: economic development, innovation-driven growth, people’s wellbeing, green and low-carbon transition, and security. Eight are binding targets and 12 are expected targets. The indicator design reflects several considerations:

• Indicators link five-year milestones with the 2035 goal and the mid-century goal of building a great modern socialist country.
• 14 indicators from the 14th Five-Year Plan are retained, and six are newly added or adjusted. For example, a new indicator on the proportion of nursing beds in elderly care institutions addresses care for disabled elderly. The indicator on infant and toddler slots per 1,000 people is changed to the enrollment rate for infant and toddler care, and the indicator on practicing (assistant) physicians per 1,000 people is adjusted to cover medical personnel (including registered nurses) to reflect the need to improve doctor quality and address nursing shortages.
• Environmental indicators are refined: the ratio of days with good air quality is adjusted to a reduction in PM2.5 concentration, and the proportion of surface water at or better than Grade III is adjusted to the proportion of good-quality water bodies.

For GDP growth, the Outline uses qualitative language with quantitative implications: GDP is to remain within a reasonable range during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, with annual targets set as appropriate, laying the groundwork for doubling per capita GDP by 2035 compared with 2020 and reaching the level of moderately developed countries. The 2026 GDP growth target is set at 4.5%–5%. The carbon intensity reduction target for the 15th Five-Year Plan period is 17%, which is calculated to achieve a reduction of more than 65% compared with 2005 by 2030.

Strategic Tasks and Major Projects

The Outline proposes strategic tasks and major measures in 16 areas, supported by 109 major engineering projects listed in dedicated columns. These can be grouped into five broad blocks. One key block is fostering new quality productive forces, which includes:

• Modern industrial system: Building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone. Traditional industries should upgrade while maintaining a reasonable share of manufacturing. Emerging and future industries should be cultivated into pillar and leading industries. Services should expand and improve, with producer services moving toward specialization and higher value-added segments, and consumer services toward higher quality, diversification, and convenience.
• Science and technology self-reliance: Strengthening original innovation and key core technology breakthroughs, increasing the share of basic research funding, reinforcing the principal role of enterprises in technological innovation, and integrating education, science and technology, and talent development.
• Digital and intelligent development: Seizing opportunities in digital and intelligent development, promoting large-scale, intensive, green, and inclusive development of computing resources, and improving the supply of high-quality data resources.

Other blocks likely cover areas such as domestic demand, reform and opening-up, regional development, green transition, and livelihood improvements, though the source text excerpt focuses on the first block.

What This Means for Foreign Founders

Foreign founders should note that the plan emphasizes high-quality development, innovation, and green transition. Sectors such as advanced manufacturing, emerging technologies, and producer services may see continued policy support. At the same time, compliance with security and environmental regulations will remain important. The plan’s emphasis on balancing domestic and international markets suggests that foreign-invested enterprises can continue to play a role in China’s trade and investment landscape.

When registering a company in China, it is advisable to monitor sector-specific policies that may be updated in line with the 15th Five-Year Plan. The plan’s focus on unified market measures and removing bottlenecks could affect market access and competition rules.

This summary is based on information published by the relevant Chinese government website and is general information, not legal or tax advice.

Call to action: Foreign founders can contact ChinaMNC on WhatsApp / WeChat at +86 153 1898 8535 for help registering and operating a company in China.