China has confidence, capability, conditions to achieve modernization goal

BEIJING -- China has laid out a comprehensive guideline for its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and charted the course for development over the next 15 years, proving the country's wisdom and perseverance in accomplishing long-term development towards modernization, despite the disruption of the COVID-19 epidemic and a complex external environment.

China's middle- and long-range plans feature stability, predictability and continuity of development programs, which have made it easy for the country to achieve its socio-economic transformation aspirations within set parameters and timelines.

The country's four-pronged strategy, which consists of one strategic goal and three measures, shows the clear continuity and consistency of China's top-level strategies, which are aimed at meeting the practical needs of national development and the highest expectations of the people, while solving the prominent problems the country is facing.

While China's leadership states that "a victory is in sight" in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, it stresses that fully building a modern socialist China is part of the four-pronged comprehensive strategy for the 14th Five-Year Plan period, signaling that China's development is entering a new phase. Meanwhile, the three measures -- to comprehensively deepen reform, advance the rule of law, and strengthen Party discipline -- remain the same, showing that China stresses and sticks to these major strategic measures, which must be taken to realize the goal. The consistency of China's development strategy stands in sharp contrast to the flip-flopping nature of measures in some Western countries.

China is not only good at making long-range strategies but also at making innovative and adaptive moves to seize development opportunities. It gives innovation "a central role" in the modernization drive and takes self-reliance in science and technology as a strategic underpinning for national development. The country will also build itself into a quality manufacturer, enhance its strength in cyberspace and digital technology, nurture a strong domestic market, deepen reform in pursuit of a high-level socialist market economy, and accelerate green and low-carbon development, among other things. All of these moves will ensure China gains a better position in tackling development challenges.

China has all the conditions necessary to implement these development measures: a solid material foundation, with its GDP expected to exceed 100 trillion yuan (about 15 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2020; rich human resources, with the country's working-age population standing at 896.4 million in 2019; a broad market, with 1.4 billion people, including 400 million middle-income earners; strong resilience, as reflected in its fight against COVID-19; and long-time social stability.

The modernization drive of China, a country with a super-large population, is unprecedented in human history. While there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to cope with the wide range of challenges and risks on the planet, the efficacy and competence demonstrated by China's achievement in the past and its long-term prosperity have injected confidence into the world, the stability of which is at stake.