China is committed to technological innovation to underpin its growth in the next 15 years

Innovation and technological self-sufficiency will be China's bet for the future development of its economy.

Not only during the five years of the next five-year plan and the foreseeable turbulence generated by the covid pandemic and its rivalry with the United States.

Also until 2035, when it aspires to have completed a series of ambitious social and economic changes that will allow it to become what Chinese President Xi Jinping has described as "a great modern, prosperous and powerful socialist nation."

This is indicated in the statement of the Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the most important annual meeting of Chinese leaders, which has given an important boost to Xi and his policies.

Throughout their four-day conclave behind closed doors in a military hotel in northwest Beijing, nearly 200 permanent members and more than 150 substitutes have given the imprimatur to the 14th Five-Year Plan, the roadmap that will direct the course of China's economy and social development until 2025. Also, for the first time, they have given the green light to another plan that is longer in time, the

.

The statement, which sends a message of optimism and self-confidence to the country, does not advance many details.

These will be announced when the "Decision", the document of conclusions of the plenary session, is published over the next few days.

But it does make party security clear that China is on the right track at a time when the West is failing to outrun the pandemic and the world faces dire economic consequences.

The Asian giant is, according to the IMF, the only G20 economy with significant growth prospects in the coming months.

Despite the uncertainty that the world is experiencing, and the blow that the covid dealt to China in the first months of the year, the stage that is opening - and the weakness of the rest of its competitors, still mired in the fight against the virus - is of "strategic opportunity."

With Xi as "key pilot and helmsman" - the text declares - it will be possible to "overcome the accumulation of problems and dangers on the road that awaits us."

Self-reliance will be key in the five-year plan.

Faced with the threat of a decoupling, technological and perhaps in other fields, with the United States, and what it considers a clear trend towards deglobalization, China wants to shield its economy against external shocks.

And it will do so through the strategy that Xi has called "double circulation": although - the president has reiterated on several occasions - the "international cycle" of foreign trade that has formed the basis of the country's rapid development in the last 30 years, the emphasis will be on the development of the domestic economy.

And, especially, special attention will be paid to innovation and technological self-sufficiency.

A fundamental objective for the Chinese Government, which has a special interest in the development and shielding of this sector to avoid the repetition of situations such as the US veto on the jewel in China's innovation crown, the giant Huawei, or its smaller rival. size ZTE.

Technology and science are mentioned 11 times in the statement collected by the state agency, Xinhua.

In order to achieve that "sustainable and healthy economic development" that the Party seeks in the next five years, it will also seek to boost domestic consumption, which is still well below the levels of developed countries.

In China it represents 38.8% of GDP, while in the European Union it is 54% and in Japan 56%.

In part, the way to achieve this will be to raise the income of family units, which have not grown at the rate of GDP in recent years.

The five-year plan will also focus on modernizing internal supply chains, strengthening companies and opening more market opportunities for foreign companies.

This time he gives up setting fixed growth goals.

It is a practice contrary to what had been done in previous plans, but in line with a similar decision this year, in which the uncertainty in the face of the covid pandemic caused the Government to give up setting a goal of increasing GDP.

In the longer term, the objectives are similar.

By 2035, the Party calculates, economic strength, scientific and technological power and national might should have registered "drastic growth."

By then, very significant advances will have been made in key technologies, and China will "enter the forefront of innovative countries."

This modernization will also reach industrialization and digitization, as well as the agricultural sector.

"We must insist on the key status of technological innovation in our general modernization plan, and make technological self-sufficiency the strategic pillar for our national development," says the document.

As a result, the still fledgling middle class "will grow significantly."

GDP per capita, the leaders estimate, will reach "the level of other moderately developed countries."

A goal that cuts by 15 years the goal that Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the economic opening of the Asian giant, had set for himself and who aspired to achieve it by 2050.

The date 2035 has not been chosen at random.

It marks the halfway point between next year, when the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and 2049, when the centenary of the founding of the People's Republic will be marked.