How China fostered growth, innovation amid global uncertainties in the past five years

This year marks the conclusion of China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), which has steered the country through global uncertainties while maintaining growth and driving innovation over the past five years.

Despite global challenges such as recurring geopolitical conflicts, soaring global inflation and rising trade protectionism, China's economy is projected to expand by over 35 trillion yuan (about $4.9 trillion) during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, accounting for around 30 percent of global growth on average each year.

With the fourth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee scheduled on Monday to review proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), it is an opportune moment to reflect on how the country has navigated its development path while continuing to inject new momentum into the world through its five-year plans.

Pillars of resilience

Over the past five years and across a longer historical arc, China's ability to navigate uncertainties has been strengthened by the steady progress made along the path outlined in its five-year plans.

Rooted in evolving economic and social realities, these plans set objectives, strategic priorities and actionable paths for each stage of China's modernization, guiding the country through continual, adaptive adjustments.

Poverty alleviation, for instance, has featured prominently in China's five-year plans since the 1980s.

Organized, large-scale efforts achieved remarkable results: the number of rural poor fell from 770 million at the end of 1978 to 98.99 million by 2012, while the rural poverty rate dropped from 97.5 percent to 10.2 percent.

Building on these achievements, China centered on "targeted poverty alleviation" during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, historically eradicating extreme poverty in the plan's final year, 2020, meeting the poverty reduction target of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development well ahead of schedule.

Under the 14th Five-Year Plan, efforts have shifted towards consolidating and expanding these gains. Employment among people lifted out of poverty has consistently stayed above 30 million, while targeted support had been provided to over 6 million people at risk of slipping back into poverty by July this year.

"These valuable experiences are worth learning by Global South countries," said Hector Villagran-Cepeda, former commercial counselor of Ecuador to China. He expressed hopes that China will share more of its experience in poverty governance and show how modern development approaches can drive rural revitalization and poverty reduction.

By combining long-term vision with well-timed adjustments, the five-year plans have anchored China's development and fostered resilience, allowing the country to maintain steady growth even amid dramatic shifts in the international environment and external shocks.

Sustained cooperation amid uncertainties

As another key focus of the 14th Five-Year Plan, China's commitment to high-standard opening up enables it to sustain international cooperation despite rising protectionism and its adverse effects on the global economy.

Under the pretext of "de-risking" and "supply chain security," some Western countries raised tariffs, tightened export controls, and curbed high-tech trade – moves that unsettled global markets and squeezed growth opportunities for developing countries. These actions underscore the need for new forms of international cooperation.

A key player in South-South cooperation, China has promoted development across the Global South through Belt and Road cooperation and other multilateral mechanisms, delivering tangible benefits for both itself and its partners.

According to China's Commerce Ministry, revenue from projects contracted by Chinese enterprises in Belt and Road partner countries reached $37.99 billion in the first four months of 2025, up 5.2 percent year-on-year. At the same time, the value of newly signed contracts reached $64.54 billion, up 17.4 percent year-on-year, effectively consolidating the country's foreign trade.

Meanwhile, China has extended development aid to over 160 countries, helping build economic corridors, railways, power grids and hospitals that have created thousands of jobs and improved livelihoods in local communities.

China has also actively participated in multilateral platforms such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which facilitate smoother global trade flows and stimulate economic growth across participating countries.

"In an era of rising protectionism and geopolitical uncertainties, the RCEP has emerged as a beacon of multilateral cooperation," said Thong Mengdavid, a lecturer at the Institute for International Studies and Public Policy of the Royal University of Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

Its success lies in reducing trade barriers and creating a seamless economic zone, where tariffs on over 90 percent of goods have been cut or removed in the past three years, he said.

"With China's continued firm support and the unwavering commitment of all members, the RCEP is well-positioned to drive regional growth and set a benchmark for global trade partnerships in the years to come," he added.

Daring innovation drives progress

The careful, methodical planning of the five-year plans is paired with a commitment to bold innovation.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China has placed innovation at the heart of its modernization drive, building one of the world's most advanced AI ecosystems and empowering sectors ranging from manufacturing and healthcare to transportation and finance.

According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the country's core AI industry reached 578.7 billion yuan (around $81.2 billion) in 2023.

In the latter half of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the AI model DeepSeek made a spectacular debut, achieving performance levels comparable to, if not exceeding, those of its global counterparts, while consuming significantly fewer computing resources.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged DeepSeek's "genuine innovations," noting that it is "super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient."

Alongside DeepSeek, China has achieved a series of landmark technological feats: bringing the world's first fourth-generation nuclear power plant into commercial operation, completing the Tiangong space station, and successfully returning the first-ever lunar soil from the far side of the moon.

In a world still searching for certainty, China's five-year plans have offered a sense of direction – one that marries systematic planning with bold innovations, new quality productive forces, green transformation, and domestic progress with global cooperation.

China's remarkable progress over the past five years has "a significant impact on the global order, promoting global economic growth, technological innovation and sustainable development," said former Kyrgyz Ambassador to China Kanaiym Baktygulova.