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China released its latest five-year plan last week—a blueprint for governing the world’s largest economy until 2030. The plan projects about 4.5 percent GDP growth in the coming year. It also tells a broader story about the present state of the Chinese economy. The country clearly sees new opportunities in the years ahead, but also new headwinds that need to be managed.

What has remained the same in this latest five-year plan compared to previous ones? What has changed? And do these plans actually work?

China released its latest five-year plan last week—a blueprint for governing the world’s largest economy until 2030. The plan projects about 4.5 percent GDP growth in the coming year. It also tells a broader story about the present state of the Chinese economy. The country clearly sees new opportunities in the years ahead, but also new headwinds that need to be managed.

What has remained the same in this latest five-year plan compared to previous ones? What has changed? And do these plans actually work?

Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Adam’s Substack newsletter.

Cameron Abadi: China’s five-year plans have their roots in Soviet centralized economic planning. How do those origins inform the plans in today’s China, which is a market-based country, obviously. What conceptually differentiates this approach to policymaking from how the West approaches economic policy?

Adam Tooze: They do indeed historically go back to the Soviet example. There’s a lot of talk about planning in the interwar period. The Nazis had four-year plans, but the original one was [Joseph] Stalin’s 1928 five-year plan. And Maoist China adopted the planning model in 1953. It was quite contentious in the Mao period. There’s a lot of warring around the Soviet examples, one of the big contentious issues in the political struggles in the regime in the 1960s.

The analogy globally is the sustainable development goals. And it’s similarly comprehensive. So they have a plan for growth, they have a plan which is adjusted year by year for urbanization, for industrial development in key technologies, but also for life expectancy. So this is the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and the Chinese government’s plan to improve the life expectancy of Chinese people. And then there are deliverables that feed into that, and you end up with the United Nations’ sustainable development........

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