Experts shed light on national governance during China’s 14th Five-Year-Plan (FYP) period (2021–2025) at a forum on Nov. 18.

Gao Peiyong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), pointed out that the 14th FYP period is a part of the most extensive and profound period of social transformation in China’s history, and also a part of the most ambitious and unique period of practical innovation in human history. It will provide powerful impetus and broad space for theoretical creation and academic prosperity, while also placing higher demands on philosophy and the social sciences.

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee has drawn a grand blueprint for development during the 14th FYP period, said Li Peilin, director-general of the National Governance Research Think Tank at CASS.

In the past two decades, China’s GDP per capita has increased nearly nine times, which is rare in the world’s history of modernization. With the rapid economic development, China has achieved rapid improvement in people’s livelihoods and welfare, Li continued. Important socio-economic indicators such as per capita income, average life expectancy, and higher education gross enrollment rates have been greatly increased, and a social security system covering the world’s largest population has been established. This has laid a profound social foundation for our future development.

Ma Yuan, director of the Bureau of Scientific Research Management at CASS, said that major issues such as national governance, Belt and Road construction, and poverty alleviation are not specific subject matters, but major research topics. Such issues particularly require collaboration and cooperation based on disciplinary research under major themes.

According to Zhang Shuhua, director of the Institute of Political Sciences at CASS, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese system has shown strong leadership, mobilization, organization, and execution.

In the case of Wuhan’s anti-epidemic efforts, community governance is playing an increasingly important role modernizing the national governance system and governance capabilities. Wang Chunguang, deputy director of the Institute of Sociology at CASS, noted that community governance is inseparable from the active participation of residents. As such, it is necessary to design topics of interest to residents, activate residents’ sense of responsibility, improve democratic consultation capabilities, and provide supportive resources.

In response to the reform and development of social security during the 14th FYP period, Wang Yanzhong, director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at CASS, suggested that the redistribution mechanism should be improved and the adjustment and precision of taxation, social security, and transfer payments should be increased. A fair, unified, and sustainable multi-level social security system that covers all people and coordinates between urban and rural areas, needs to be improved.

During the 14th FYP period, China will focus on poverty alleviation in both urban and rural areas, said Zhang Yi, director of the Institute of Social Development Strategies at CASS. The boosted consumption levels across the country make the absolute poverty line more relevant to today’s development. As such, when determining targets for poverty alleviation in urban and rural areas in the future, the absolute poverty line should be raised or the relative poverty line can be lowered. There is little difference in governance costs between the two.