IN 1953, taking cues from their Soviet advisers, Chinese leaders launched their first five-year plan. They charted a course for rapid industrialisation of the then-agrarian country. Now they are drafting their 13th such document. It will show how much has changed. Its main message will be that industrialisation has run its course and that China will have to find a new engine of growth. But the very existence of the plan (to run from 2016 to 2020) is indicative of how, in economic policymaking, much has stayed the same.
China will publish the first outline after an annual meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee at the end of October. It will be very different from the party’s early plans. It once set specific production targets for steel and grain, among other things—hallmarks of the central planning that led China so astray. Since the early 1980s, the role of the plans has been relaxed. They clarify medium-term policy priorities, but are not blueprints that must be adhered to slavishly.
Yet the plans are still important, not least because of the attention they receive. “They are large neon signs of where the party wants to take...Continue reading
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