Online Roundtable: Flash Deep Dive: China's New Five-Year Plan - Is the EU's Competitiveness Agenda up for the Challenge? (ECKN)

Online Roundtable: Flash Deep Dive: China's New Five-Year Plan - Is the EU's Competitiveness Agenda up for the Challenge? (ECKN)

Following the Two Sessions (the annual meetings of China's top legislative body, the National People's Congress, and the top political advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference), the Chinese leadership has made its plans for guiding the economy and society through the next Five-Year Plan cycle clear. The 15th Five-Year Plan takes a two-pronged approach to the future: on the one hand, it aims to stabilize internal growth and welfare in terms of employment, social development, and a more stable environment for the private sector, while on the other hand, it plans to drive forward with industrial upgrading, innovation, and a more integrated approach to national and economic security. Taken together, these choices are designed to harden China’s position for intensified geoeconomic competition.

For the EU, the implications will be immediate and structural. They will range from trade and investment frictions, through supply chain reshaping, to competition in strategic sectors such as embodied AI, smart manufacturing, clean technology or critical materials. The FYP will also provide the context for how China engages with Europe on climate, market access, and third-country partnerships, at a time when both are rebalancing their economic security policies.

In this closed-door briefing, we decoded what the outcomes of the Two Sessions and the upcoming Five-Year Plan mean for the future of China up to 2030 and considered how the EU should react – and what options it has at his hands.

Introducing the ECKN

The European China Knowledge Network (ECKN) is a collaborative initiative founded by the China Knowledge Network (CKN), MERICS, and the Swedish National China Centre. This seminar, the fourth in ECKN’s founding series, will reflect on the value of policy-relevant knowledge exchange on China at the EU level.

CKN — a Dutch government-wide knowledge platform involving all ministries and hundreds of China experts — will share its experience in shaping informed and adaptive policy strategies. Together with its ECKN partners, CKN will highlight how this model now brings added value to the European context.

Speakers

Alicia García-Herrero (Natixis/Bruegel)

Bert Hofmann (National University Singapore)

Jacob Gunter (MERICS)

Moderator: Ingrid d'Hooghe (Clingendael)