[This article was originally published by Global Times in Chinese on March 19, 2025]
Made in China (MIC) enters a new era of Chinese quality production, with cutting edge technology integration, reorientation to domestic markets and internal socioeconomic development – and foremost unbeatable international competitiveness.
The 2025 Two Sessions, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are held back-to-back, from 5 to 11 March 2025. The stated economic goal is a soft growth of about 5% – like that of 2024, one of the world’s largest – with a vastly expanded horizontal growth of improved people’s well-being, especially in rural areas, through new physical and social infrastructure.
The Two Sessions Work Report also outlines other key development goals for this year, such as the creation of some 12 million new urban jobs to counter the 5.5% urban unemployment rate, and limiting inflation to 2%.
The traditional linear GDP growth is gradually being complemented by “growth” in people’s wellbeing. According to the World Happy Planet Index 2024, originally introduced by Myanmar (Burma), China ranked 51st of 147 countries, but will steadily advance with its strong shift from productive to well-being social-infrastructure investments. At present the Nordic countries are leading the Happiness Index.
The European ranking especially Northern Europe may change rather drastically through the fear-factor with the recent western-initiated nuclear NATO presence in the northern European countries – making people falsely believe that they are under a Russian threat. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In China, people’s well-being is not affected by such media manipulations. To the contrary, China’s Peace agenda with internal as well as external security through her non-belligerent domestic and international approach, contributes to people’s well-being.
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With the State Council Premier’s key note speech the tone is set for the Government’s 2025 Work Report – which at the same time prepares the phasing-in of the 15th 5-Year Plan (2026-2030), with the ambitious long-term goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
Happiness of the people is China’s top priority. The 2025 and the next 5-year plan are extraordinary determinations on how to go about, not only achieving and maintaining people’s wellbeing, but also stay internationally competitive with high quality development.
The 2025 Plan will strive for completing the 2024 target to high quality standards – MIC will become an international acronym for superior quality production, to be further expanded and rolled out internationally in the 15th Five-Year Plan.
China’s economy will further concentrate on local development, based on well-paid skill-based hard work, with commitment to individual motivation and dedication to innovation. Early-age solid education is the base for China’s universal economic and social development policy.
The seeds for education and creativity are already planted with vocational nursery and childcare services, followed by high-quality education. As China’s success has traditionally been – and will continue to be – people-centered, subsidies for top quality education will be an integral part of the 2025 program, leading onto the 15th 5-Year Plan. As the Government’s budget will increasingly be oriented on People’s livelihoods, the people centered social policy system is steadily improving.
This will allow for social harmony and stability – and internal Peace also means non-aggression towards the outside world. In a world marked by turmoil, conflicts, and constant wars – Peace is an invaluable asset that makes for China’s high-ranking reputation, for her conflict mediation diplomacy around the world.
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The Two Sessions are about to present the world with a new China – with a 2025 plan, leading up to an extraordinary 5-year program, that is foremost peaceful, with a high-tech production apparatus and embedded AI-technologies, promoting small business and venture capital initiatives, using new financial-capital growth buzzwords, like in potentially fast-growing Unicorn and Gazelle companies.
Unicorns are ventures valued at more than one billion dollars in the first years of life, with such examples as Uber and SpaceX; Gazelles are ventures under five years old with an average employment growth rate of more than 20% per year over three years, and with no more than about ten employees at the beginning. One of the leading “Unicorn” companies is the Chinese startup, AI DeepSeek. It has already outperformed its Western counterparts.
Again, the name of the game is creativity and innovation, for which the government’s banking system will make low-interest, and subsidized loans available. As part of the “zero-based budgeting” – internal transfers of budget resources between sectors are indicated as priorities shift.
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The new MIC with Chinese characteristics is also concentrating on local, regional, and national development. First, rural revitalization creates small-scale rural hubs promoting local cultures for tourism, or small industries, for example handicrafts, and needed local infrastructure – transport, production, education. The nationwide rural-hubs approach is expected to generate a fast-growing local economy with millions of new jobs and rapidly improved living conditions of rural population.
Second, as a larger-scale development scheme, China’s Two Sessions this year are focusing on the “low-altitude” economy. It consists in accelerating the establishment of a low-altitude flight service system, based on local regional conditions, it may include low-altitude flights for forestry control, emergency, and medical rescue systems, as well a taxi services and public transport.
Low-altitude airspace ranges from 1,000 meters to 3,000 meters. In 2024, the “low-altitude economy” was first included in the Government annual Work Report, stressing its pivotal role in the nation’s economic development.
This new AI assisted trillion-plus yuan (about 130-plus billion US$) industry, initiated in 2024 is being propelled in 2025 from pilot project of the “Land Aircraft Carrier”, a modular flying car, to large-scale national commercialization. Based on sound and safe technology, it is being standardized nationwide and will during the 15th Five-year plan be ready for export and international trade.
Today, Shenzhen has some 1,700 low-altitude related local industries. Hong Kong’s international financing services, will facilitate accelerating global industrialization of this new technology.
Currently, 15 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Changzhou in East China’s Jiangsu Province have announced a joint initiative to establish a low-altitude economy ecosystem, targeting the development of 100 demonstration projects by 2025. Approximately 30 more provinces have listed the development of the low-altitude economies into their local government work reports. More may join as this promising technology takes hold.
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Internationally, China is also reorienting her economy to within the Asian market, notably the ASEAN countries, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in Bangkok, Thailand, in Augst 1967. Simultaneously, China a co-founder of the BRICS nations is focusing cooperation and trade on the Global South, which led by the BRICS-plus and the new BRICS-associates is poised to establish a trade network from Asia to Africa to Latin America – that will more than nullify the western dollar-based sanction scheme.
As usual, China remains open for fair trade with the west, but is no longer threatened by the bullying trade and tariff wars signaled by the new Washington Trump Administration. Western dependence is gone with the critical semi-conductor production being domesticized, meaning produced at home.
The international echo of these two sessions is only positive – as one observer said, China has done everything right during the past 40 years.
One of the most positive benefits of the Two Sessions is the expressed confidence in the Chinese economy. The past has proven and the 2025 Two Sessions underscored again the fact that the second largest economy – by PPP standards (Purchasing Power Parity) the world’s largest – with her high-quality technology development, will bring fresh energy into world economies, those who are able and willing to detach from the western conflicts steeping the globe with uncertainties.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020). Peter is a Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing and a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Republished by The 21st Century
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