China's 13th Five-Year Plan draws great interest from world

BEIJING - China's development blueprint for the next five years, the 13th Five-Year Plan, has attracted wide attention from overseas, with many media and experts expecting it to have a major bearing on the trajectory of world economic development.

As the locomotive of world economic development, China's economic reform and its potential impact on the other sectors of the Chinese society are a big concern to the international community, said leading Russian sinologist Nikolai Samoilov, professor of Asian and African Social Development Theory at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

"A healthy Chinese economy is of great importance to the world and would definitely promote the win-win economic cooperation among countries in the world," Samoilov said.

China has contributed around 40 percent of global income growth over the past five years, said James Laurenceson, deputy director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney upon the unveiling of China's new five-year plan.

"The IMF forecasts that China's economy will be 44 percent bigger in 2020 than now. This means that China will remain the leading source of global growth in the coming five years," he said.

"China is a key driver of the world economy," and analysts have urged it to undertake more and broader structural reforms to sustain its long-term economic growth, said the Agence France-Press in a recent report.

The proposal on the 13th Five-Year Plan was adopted at the Fifth Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, which ended in Beijing on Oct. 29.

It sets a target of "maintaining medium-high growth," highlighting the ideas of innovation, coordination, green development, opening up and sharing to fulfill its goals.

"This ushers in an era of a managed market economy, where the modern Chinese economy is prepared and completely ready for the approach to the second centenary target of 2049," said Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club committed to promoting China-Britain links, in a recent article.

China's "growth pattern is truly changing from an investment, export-led economy to a domestic consumption, services-driven one, leading to slower albeit healthier growth," said Livio Ribeiro, an economist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, in an interview with Xinhua.

The shift "comes along with deeper urbanization" and increasing demand for "soft commodities and cleaner energy sources," Ribeiro said.

"China will most likely buy much more food and services by the end of this decade. Understanding that is vital to play along with the growth transition and to reap all the opportunities it will create," he said.

Besides "huge opportunities" in the financial sector, Joseph Foudy, clinical associate professor of economics at New York University, also expects the healthcare, automobile and electronics sectors to thrive under the next five-year plan.

"The auto sector is in slowdown in China, but I expect it to kick back and return in the next couple of years to be very vibrant," he told Xinhua.