Global experts laud new 5-year plan

Planning key to progress

Mohammad Ahmed, an assistant professor of Economics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said the world will benefit from China's move and stable development as it successfully eliminates its absolute poverty.

"The 14th Five-Year Plan, in fact, reflects a clear development road map of a country with nearly one-fifth of the world's total population, including 400 million middle-income earners," he said, adding that the plan model has been instrumental to China's progress since 1953.

"China's five-year planning mechanism has been ensuring the country's gradual and concrete steps toward its goal of modernization, providing predictable opportunities to the world. The goals set in the 14th Five-Year Plan are doable, given China's track record of economic growth," he said.

"China is a 'moderately prosperous' country now. The Chinese leadership has achieved it by reducing its reliance on exports for economic growth and ensuring that growth is sustainable.

"Now that goals for the next five years have been set, no one can stop China from becoming the world's biggest economy."

Oleg Timofeev, an associate professor at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, said what has been revealed of the 14th Five-Year Plan indicates China's determination for better self-development.

In a broader context, Timofeev said, the move adheres to innovation, which is a core of China's modernization, technological self-reliance and the strategy of building a modern scientific and technological power.

Particularly of note "is China's widely announced determination to integrate development and security, to build a higher level of peace and safety and to build a solid national security barrier," he said.

"New goals in security and defense areas are crucial for the nation's development in a turbulent international situation when the United States and other Western powers try to endanger not only China's global stance but fundamental elements of its internal integrity and stability," he said.

Ren Qi in Moscow and Liu Xuan in Beijing contributed to this story.