Deciphering the 15th Five Year Plan

China’s 15th Five Year Plan, spanning 2026-2030, was approved by the National People’s Congress in its March 2026 session. The plan, a good 80,000 Chinese characters long, offered few major surprises. This is for two reasons, says MERICS Senior Associate Fellow Bert Hofman: one, there is a lot of continuity with the 14th, and even the 13th Plan, and two, the “guidance” that the central committee of the communist party provided last October was, as expected, duly incorporated.