China plots its path to 2035

The CCP has announced its vision for the next 15 years, with the nation to be stronger, richer and possibly still led by Xi Jinping.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has announced its vision for China in 2035. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP

The elite of the Chinese Communist Party has revealed its vision for 2035 in which China will be stronger, richer and possibly still led by Xi Jinping.

Days before the US election, the party’s central committee concluded a pivotal four-day, closed-door meeting in Beijing to plot China’s 2021-25 five-year plan and the outlook to 2035.

The post-plenum communique traditionally offers policy guidance ahead of the release of a detailed five-year-plan the following March. “By 2035, China’s economic, scientific and overall national strength will rise sharply,” the communique said, adding that per capita GDP would reach “the level of moderately developed countries”.

The entire communique was read out for 30 minutes on state broadcaster China Central TV, a sign of its importance in the country’s highly organised po litical system.

ANZ’s chief China economist Raymond Yeung said the communique’s commitment implied “an aggressive path of economic growth”. That could provide huge growth potential to China’s major trading partners, including Australia, its biggest supplier of iron ore, LNG gas, coking coal and — for now — wine.

The US was not directly mentioned, but the confrontation between the two powers has led to an increasingly urgent focus on technological self-sufficiency.

The first area of focus announced after the meeting was scientific and technological self-reliance so China could face “the main economic battlefield”.

State media was direct about the reason for the leadership’s focus on resilience.

Guo Xiaobing, director of the Arms Control Studies Centre of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times the rising power was “facing increasing external uncertainties”. “The escalating China-US tensions are a serious challenge to our security, as the US continues to provoke us economically, technologically and militarily,” he said.

Chinese intellectuals have expressed ambivalence about the US election, saying Donald Trump and Joe Biden would be hostile to China.

“America’s China policy will only get increasingly hyper-sensitive, unyielding, and arrogant as they double down on containment and suppression,” Yuan Peng, an influential foreign policy thinker in Beijing and president of China Institutes of Contemporary Internal Relations, has argued.

Among the goals listed in the communique — released late on Thursday — was the construction of a fully modern army by 2027, a century after the founding of the People’s Liberation Army.

Hong Kong-based military analyst Song Zhongping said the new centennial goal seemed to indicate an ambition to make the PLA “a leading modern force in the world, one that can be on par with the US army”.

Previous plenums have been used to signal personnel moves, giving an indication of succession plans. There were none at this week’s gathering, which included a longer term focus to 2035 by which time Mr Xi would be 82, the same age as Mao Zedong when he died in 1976.

The Chicago think tank MacroPolo this week released a forecast of China in 2025, which provided a clearer outlook than the jargon-heavy ruling party’s readout. MacroPolo’s director Damien Ma and his research team forecast China would become “more capable yet more outwardly cautious” in the next five years. “[China in 2025] will be near-majority middle class for the first time, with increasing technological parity with Silicon Valley and a less carbon-intensive energy landscape, all under the aegis of a stronger Xi Jinping and his vision of governance,” said Mr Ma.

The MacroPolo team predicted Beijing’s domestic focus would “moderate its appetite for global adventurism”.

Although MacroPolo analyst Neil Thomas also considered a scenario he said was less likely in which Mr Xi’s leadership could be undermined by a reluctance to pull back from “risky situations”.

“One such misstep could be a Chinese decision to massively escalate security tensions in Asia that prompts major multilateral sanctions and military retaliation, especially if the ultimate outcome is not a ready success for Beijing,” Mr Thomas wrote.