High-level Seminar on the 15th Five-Year Plan

Your Excellency Vice Chair Zhou Haibing, 

Distinguished colleagues from the National Development and Reform Commission and other Government Ministries,

Distinguished representatives of United Nations entities and international financial institutions,

各位朋友大家好！

What an honour it is to join you today for this High-Level Seminar on China’s Fifteenth Five-Year Plan!

This is an extraordinary opportunity for the United Nations in China and IFIs to gain a yet deeper understanding of China’s development vision for the next five years.

And also for us to reflect on how our work can support this vision and where we might offer practical expertise, policy advice and partnership.

Let me say that I am particularly grateful to NDRC for honouring this long-planned Seminar together at a moment when a particularly significant international visit is also taking place!

Friends – we all know and acknowledge it:

China’s development trajectory over the past several decades has been nothing short of historic and meteoric.

Close to 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty, representing one of the largest contributions any country has made to global progress on Sustainable Development Goal 1.

This achievement did not come about by accident.

It was supported by sustained national commitment, disciplined implementation and a form of strategic development planning that has shaped priorities across successive Five-Year Plans.

And this has now culminated in the Fifteenth Five Year Plan, the 十五五.

As President Xi Jinping has pointed out, 

“发展是人类社会的永恒主题”

Or “Development is an eternal theme of human society” 

Friends — 

For too many years, national development planning has been “out of fashion” in parts of international development thinking.

Today, that view has changed.

There is broad recognition that China’s experience reflects a judicious balance between strategic direction and practical flexibility.

Five-Year Plans do not attempt to prescribe every detail of development.

Rather, they provide a framework of priorities, incentives and direction.

They are a form of indicative planning suited to a complex modern economy, guiding without micromanaging and aligning national ambition with implementation capacity.

Friends —

This experience offers important inspiration for the world.

Through South-South cooperation, China is sharing lessons, knowledge and capacity with other developing countries in a spirit of solidarity.

At the same time, we understand and appreciate that China is not prescribing a single model for others.

It is sharing its experience, while recognizing that each country must follow its own development path.

Turning to China’s own next stage of development, I am struck by both the ambition and the honesty of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan.

The ambition is clear.

China is continuing its steady progress towards achieving “socialist modernization” and is on track to become a moderately developed economy by 2035.

But, as China itself recognizes, this will not mark the end of the sustainable development journey.

It will instead mark an important new stage in a development journey that evolves, yet remains aligned to the core principles of the SDGs.

Because, friends —

The 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals remind us that development is never one-dimensional.

It requires managing the connections between goals that may appear separate but are in fact deeply interdependent.

Climate action is connected to health, employment and gender equality.

Education is connected to innovation, productivity and social mobility.

Social protection is connected to domestic demand, confidence and inclusive growth.

More provocatively, Agenda 2030 tells us all that the distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries is, in some ways, artificial. 

No country is likely to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in their entirety by 2030 and, in that sense at least, we are all still “developing”: even the wealthiest and most powerful.

This is why I also welcome the honesty of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan.

It is clear about the challenges that still need to be addressed.

It recognizes that demographic transition, population ageing and the need for stronger social services are all directly linked to expanded domestic consumption.

And that rural revitalization and green and low-carbon development are essential for modernizing the economy and developing the new quality productive forces（新质生产力)  that sit at the heart of the 15th FYP.

Friends —

Many of these challenges come together around addressing “unbalanced development” as encapsulated in the 15th FYP.

As it recognizes :

发展不平衡不充分问题依然突出

Or “unbalanced and inadequate development remains a prominent problem.”

In a country that has developed at extraordinary speed, it is natural that some regions, communities and groups have found it more challenging to keep pace.

This concern is very familiar to myself and my UN colleagues as it sits at the heart of the 2030 Agenda in our shared, global commitment to “leave no one behind”.

China expresses this challenge this in its own language, through the commitment to people-centred development, common prosperity and high-quality development.

But the priority is one and the same.

And this is one important area where the United Nations in China can offer expertise – as, I know, our IFI and MDB colleagues also can and do.

The UN’s mission around the world is, indeed, to help countries advance sustainable development in ways that are inclusive, resilient and equitable.

Through the new UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for 2026–2030, we stand ready to support China across the 十五五 priorities that will be discussed over the next two days.

These include social development and public services, green and low-carbon transition, coordinated regional development, high-level opening-up, high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and innovation financing.

We bring to the table technical expertise, international experience, normative standards, convening power and practical programming capacity.

More importantly. we also bring a strong commitment to partnership with China.

So: over the next two days, I look forward to learning more about the strategic priorities of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan and the implementation pathways that will give them life.

I also look forward to discussing how the UN system in China and other international partners can refine and deepen support to NDRC and other national partners.

Let this seminar be not only an exchange of priorities and plans, but the beginning of even deeper, concrete cooperation.

As a Chinese saying wisely puts it, “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. （独行快，众行远)

Together, we can help ensure that the implementation of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan contributes to China’s high-quality development and to global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

Thank you. 

谢谢大家！