Ren Hongyan

Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary

and Plenipo­ten­tiary of Chi­na to T&T

The 20th Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na (CPC) con­vened its fourth ple­nary ses­sion in Bei­jing from Oc­to­ber 20-23. The meet­ing re­viewed and adopt­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of CPC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee for For­mu­lat­ing the 15th Five-Year Plan for Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sum­maris­ing the achieve­ments of the pre­vi­ous plan and out­lin­ing a grand blue­print for Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment over the next five years.

I. Dur­ing the 14th plan, Chi­na achieved new pi­o­neer­ing progress, break­through trans­for­ma­tions, and his­toric ac­com­plish­ments in its eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment.

The re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 14th plan pe­ri­od was an ex­cep­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant five years in the course of Chi­na’s de­vel­op­ment. In the face of a com­pli­cat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al land­scape and chal­leng­ing do­mes­tic tasks of ad­vanc­ing re­form, pro­mot­ing de­vel­op­ment and en­sur­ing sta­bil­i­ty, Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment achieved new pi­o­neer­ing progress, break­through trans­for­ma­tions, and his­toric ac­com­plish­ments.

• Sus­tained en­hance­ment

of eco­nom­ic strength

The to­tal eco­nom­ic out­put has sur­passed 130 tril­lion RMB, and is ex­pect­ed to reach ap­prox­i­mate­ly 140 tril­lion RMB by 2025, with a con­tri­bu­tion rate to glob­al eco­nom­ic growth main­tain­ing at around 30%. The to­tal val­ue of im­port and ex­port of goods trade in­creased from 32.2 tril­lion RMB to 43.8 tril­lion RMB, while fi­nal con­sump­tion con­tributed an av­er­age of 56.2% to eco­nom­ic growth.

• Strong mo­men­tum

in tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion

To­tal R&D ex­pen­di­ture re­mains the sec­ond high­est in the world, be­com­ing the top ten of the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex for the first time. Ma­jor na­tion­al equip­ment, in­clud­ing the do­mes­ti­cal­ly pro­duced C919 large air­craft and large cruise ships, made their de­but, a num­ber of key core tech­nolo­gies achieved break­throughs, and emerg­ing in­dus­tries con­tin­ued to grow.

• Sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment

in peo­ple’s well-be­ing

The world’s largest ed­u­ca­tion, so­cial se­cu­ri­ty, and health­care sys­tems were es­tab­lished. Res­i­dents’ av­er­age life ex­pectan­cy reached 79 years. Ur­ban new em­ploy­ment re­mained sta­ble above 12 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. More than 11 mil­lion units of af­ford­able hous­ing were se­cured. Achieve­ments in pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion were con­sol­i­dat­ed and ex­pand­ed. And the rur­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy was com­pre­hen­sive­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

• Marked im­prove­ment

in the eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment

The world’s largest re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tem was built. Pro­duc­tion and sales of elec­tric ve­hi­cles have ranked first glob­al­ly for ten con­sec­u­tive years; en­er­gy con­sump­tion per unit of GDP de­creased cu­mu­la­tive­ly by 11.6%, equiv­a­lent to a re­duc­tion of 1.1 bil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. Sig­nif­i­cant progress was made in build­ing a beau­ti­ful Chi­na.

• Re­form and open­ing-up

were com­pre­hen­sive­ly deep­ened

The neg­a­tive list for mar­ket ac­cess has been re­duced to 106 items. The mar­ket-ori­ent­ed, law-based, and in­ter­na­tion­alised busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment has con­tin­ued to im­prove. The is­land-wide in­de­pen­dent cus­toms op­er­a­tion in Hainan Free Trade Port has been launched. The high-lev­el open­ing-up is be­ing ac­cel­er­at­ed and the high-qual­i­ty Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive co­op­er­a­tion is be­ing ad­vanced.

II. Us­ing medi­um- and long-term plans to guide eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment a key gov­er­nance ap­proach

The rea­son Chi­na has been able to con­tin­u­ous­ly pro­mote eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and so­cial progress through suc­ces­sive five-year pe­ri­ods lies in a set of ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance wis­dom. Em­ploy­ing medi­um- and long-term plans to guide eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment is a key gov­er­nance ap­proach of CPC and a cru­cial po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage of the so­cial­ism with chi­nese char­ac­ter­is­tics. With­in this, sev­er­al ex­pe­ri­ences mer­it shar­ing:

First, main­tain strate­gic re­solve and con­ti­nu­ity in de­ci­sion-mak­ing. The long-term de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion re­quires a clear di­rec­tion and per­sis­tent en­deav­our. Chi­na’s prac­tice shows that a wide­ly recog­nised and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly for­mu­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy can over­come short-term fluc­tu­a­tions and dis­tur­bances, en­sur­ing that the state steadi­ly ad­vances to­ward its es­tab­lished ob­jec­tives. CPC, as the strong lead­er­ship core, plays a cru­cial role in for­mu­lat­ing and pro­mot­ing the plans. Through sci­en­tif­ic de­ci­sion-mak­ing and top-lev­el de­sign, it en­sures that the plans align close­ly with the times, em­body the will of the peo­ple, and safe­guard long-term in­ter­ests.

Sec­ond, em­pha­sise con­cen­trat­ing ef­forts to ac­com­plish ma­jor tasks. Fac­ing key tasks and sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in the de­vel­op­ment process, the ef­fec­tive con­cen­tra­tion of re­sources to form syn­er­gy is the in­dis­pens­able guar­an­tee for swift­ly over­com­ing bot­tle­necks and achiev­ing break­throughs. The plan­ning sys­tem led by the five-year plan is es­tab­lished, de­com­pos­ing the na­tion­al over­all ob­jec­tives in­to mul­ti­ple sub-goals across dif­fer­ent lev­els and cat­e­gories, ful­ly mo­bil­is­ing re­sources and forces from all sec­tors to form a uni­fied na­tion­al ef­fort, there­by ac­com­plish­ing many piv­otal mat­ters re­lat­ing to the na­tion­al econ­o­my and peo­ple’s liveli­hood.

Third, ad­here to car­ry­ing out the set blue­print un­til it be­comes re­al­i­ty. De­vel­op­ment can­not be ac­com­plished overnight. Chi­na’s plan­ning sys­tem em­pha­sis­es both in­her­it­ing from the past and con­tin­u­ous ef­forts in­to the fu­ture. Each round of plan­ning not on­ly con­sol­i­dates and el­e­vates the achieve­ments of the pre­ced­ing plan but al­so lays the foun­da­tion and charts the course for the next stage of de­vel­op­ment. This spir­it of “car­ry­ing out the set blue­print un­til it be­comes re­al­i­ty” en­sures the con­ti­nu­ity and pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment of the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy, en­abling long-term vi­sions to be grad­u­al­ly re­alised through the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of phased ob­jec­tives.

The above ex­pe­ri­ences, root­ed in Chi­na’s na­tion­al con­di­tions and prac­tice, fun­da­men­tal­ly lie in achiev­ing the uni­ty of de­vel­op­ment ef­fi­cien­cy and sta­bil­i­ty through the in­te­gra­tion of sci­en­tif­ic top-lev­el de­sign and broad so­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion, of­fer­ing valu­able ref­er­ence for ad­vanc­ing the mod­erni­sa­tion of gov­er­nance.

III. Chi­na’s de­vel­op­ment will bring op­por­tu­ni­ties to the world

De­vel­op­ment is the en­dur­ing theme of a na­tion’s pros­per­i­ty and progress. Dur­ing the 15th Five-Year Plan pe­ri­od, Chi­na will place greater em­pha­sis on high-qual­i­ty de­vel­op­ment, build a mod­ern in­dus­tri­al sys­tem, lead the for­ma­tion of new qual­i­ty pro­duc­tive forces, ac­cel­er­ate the es­tab­lish­ment of a new de­vel­op­ment pat­tern, earnest­ly ad­vance com­pre­hen­sive rur­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion, pro­mote co-or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment, ac­cel­er­ate the com­pre­hen­sive green trans­for­ma­tion of eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, con­tin­u­ous­ly en­hance peo­ple’s well-be­ing, and ex­pand open­ing-up at a high­er lev­el. This is not on­ly a road map for Chi­na’s own mod­erni­sa­tion, but al­so pro­vides broad­er prospects for deep­en­ing Chi­na’s co­op­er­a­tion with coun­tries world­wide, in­clud­ing T&T.

Al­though I have been in T&T for on­ly two months, I have ob­served that this is a na­tion full of po­ten­tial and hope. Un­der the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T is striv­ing to ad­vance the coun­try’s mod­erni­sa­tion process. Even though Chi­na and T&T are ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tant and the two na­tions have dif­fer­ent con­di­tions and re­al­i­ties, both of them be­long to the Glob­al South. The peo­ples share a strong yearn­ing for a bet­ter life, and the gov­ern­ments of both coun­tries ac­tive­ly im­ple­ment the peo­ple-cen­tered de­vel­op­ment phi­los­o­phy.

As a trust­ed friend and re­li­able part­ner of T&T, Chi­na will re­gard the 15th Five-Year Plan as a new start­ing point, fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing the five pro­grammes for build­ing a Chi­na–Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty with a shared fu­ture —sol­i­dar­i­ty, de­vel­op­ment, civil­i­sa­tion, peace, and peo­ple-to-peo­ple con­nec­tiv­i­ty, which is pro­posed by Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, main­tain close di­a­logue and ex­changes with the T&T, en­hance the align­ment of de­vel­op­ment strate­gies, broad­en ar­eas of com­mon in­ter­ests, and joint­ly ad­vance along the path of shared pros­per­i­ty and progress to cre­ate a brighter fu­ture.