This year’s “Two Sessions” meeting — the most important annual event on China’s political calendar — is particularly noteworthy because Beijing will ratify its 14th five-year plan, a broad outline of goals through 2025 that policymakers have been working on for months. The meeting kicked off last Thursday and will run through the better part of this week.
After dodging a recession last year, Beijing said Friday it expects the world’s second largest economy to grow by more than 6% in 2021, which if achieved will keep China on pace to match US GDP as early as 2028. President Xi Jinping wants the economy to double in size by 2035.
But on the back of the bruising trade war with the United States, China has already called out self-reliance and technological independence as major goals. And as climate change accelerates, President Xi Jinping pledged last September that coal-guzzling China will go carbon neutral by 2060.
Those are lofty ambitions, and until now it had been far from clear how Beijing planned to achieve them. But the world got more clues last week when Premier Li Keqiang outlined some aspects of the country’s agenda, and Beijing released a draft of the five-year plan.
Shedding reliance on foreign tech
One key goal that Xi has already outlined is a desire for China to shed its reliance on the United States for key technology, such as parts that power smartphones, computers, telecommunications gear and next-generation gadgets.
Li stressed the importance of…
