In March 2021, the 13th National People’s Congress adopted the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives through the Year 2035, charting the development blueprint and action plan for the country from 2012 to 2025. At the same time, it set the long-term objectives up to the year 2035. It foresees to basically achieving the objectives of socialist modernization objectives by 2035, 15 years earlier than previously planned for realization at the middle of the century.

 

Different from previous five-year plans, the 14th Five-Year Plan includes long-range objectives set for completion in 15 years up to 2035, and furthermore, it includes several quantitative targets, including

 

• Making breakthroughs in core technologies, and elevating China to the forefront on the rank of innovation-driven countries

• Basically realizing the objectives of new-type industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, and building up the modern economic system

• Developing and applying widely the green ways of production and life, with a fundamental improvement in the ecological environment

• Developing and forming a new pattern of opening up, and greatly enhancing the country’s new advantages in participating in international economic cooperation and competition 

• Elevating China’s per-capita GDP to the level of the moderately developed countries, and continuingly increasing the size of the middle-income group

 

The long-range objectives could facilitate the government to come up with landmark strategies, to implement forward-looking, national, fundamental and specific measures to plan and coordinate the continuing reforms in major fields and sectors.

 

From the 11th Five-Year Plan in 2006, the Central Government incorporated Hong Kong into the overall framework for national development, and Hong Kong established direct working relations with the National Development and Reform Commission to cooperate in the making of the five-year plans.

 

The Central Government, in making and implementing the national 

development plans, gives adequate consideration to the roles that Hong Kong

can play.

 

The 14th Five-Year Plan has a special chapter on supporting the development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and this helps enhance Hong Kong’s competitive edges in different economic sectors and better integrate into the overall national development. The Hong Kong SAR Government needs to cooperate in the national development by continuously making and implementing various policy measures, making better use of its super connector status between the mainland and the international markets, and seizing every opportunity brought by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to make its unique contributions to the national economic development and the opening-up drive.

 

Hong Kong will incorporate into the overall national development and will fully tap its unique roles and advantages to serve the needs of the country.