A view of Lujiazui, Shanghai File photo: VCG
The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period is a crucial five-year phase connecting the past with the future. Following the achievement of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realizing the First Centenary Goal, this period represents a key stage for China to ride the momentum and basically realize socialist modernization.
Facing profound and complex changes for development in the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will improve the macroeconomic governance system to ensure steady and sustained progress in its high-quality development.
During this period of profound and complex changes in China’s development environment, expectation management has become a vital tool in the macroeconomic policy, altering the decision-making behavior of market entities and helping regulate aggregate social demand. By influencing the transmission efficiency of macroeconomic policies, expectation management can amplify the effects of traditional fiscal and monetary policies, translating social confidence into the steadfastness required for the country’s long-term stable economic development.
Policy coordination, meanwhile, is the deliberate choice for addressing multiple objectives and navigating complex systems. The economic and social development during the next five years encompasses multi-dimensional goals, including advancing high-quality development, strengthening scientific and technological innovation, deepening comprehensive reforms, and promoting public well-being. China’s high-quality development is a systematic project that cannot be supported by any single policy in isolation.
Expectation management and policy coordination are mutually reinforcing and interdependent, together forming a crucial part of China’s macro governance system. Their positive interaction constitutes a key characteristic of the modernization of China’s macroeconomic governance.
On the one hand, efficient policy coordination forms the foundation for stabilizing expectations. When various policies are aligned and closely coordinated, they convey clear and definitive strategic signals to the market. This synergistic effect helps shape a clear and stable policy environment, thereby laying a solid foundation for expectation management.
On the other hand, effective expectation management creates favorable conditions for policy coordination. By stabilizing market confidence and guiding micro-level behavior, it ensures that both economic and non-economic policies are accurately understood and positively responded during implementation. This reduces friction in the policy transmission process and ultimately enhances the overall effectiveness of policy coordination.
An Zidong Photo: Courtesy of An Zidong
The wisdom of China’s macroeconomic policy coordination is by no means confined domestically. Guided by the vision of building a community with a shared future for the mankind, China’s domestic policies are increasingly interconnected with its international engagements.
Through the Belt and Road Initiative, production capacity cooperation, and shared development with a good number of developing countries, China is practicing high-level economic policy coordination on a global scale, committed to achieving common development.
By continuously expanding opening-up and deepening multilateral cooperation, China actively promotes the alignment and mutual learning of development strategies among nations. It is committed to reducing the spillover effects arising from inconsistent policy orientations among countries and lowering transaction costs and uncertainties in the global market.
From infrastructure connectivity in Asia to industrialization partnerships in Africa, from climate governance coordination to digital economy rule alignment, China’s practice of international policy coordination is providing important public goods for building a more stable and inclusive global development environment. This not only serves China’s own modernization but also helps enhance the overall resilience and long-term potential growth of the world economy.
Facing a challenging international environment, China, through efficient macro-governance and leveraging expectation management and policy coordination, is injecting certainty to counter external uncertainties. China will not only carve out brighter development prospects for itself, but will contribute invaluable certainty and powerful “Chinese momentum” to the global economy.
An Zidong is a professor at the School of Applied Economics under Renmin University of China. Wang Yan is a PhD candidate at the School of Applied Economics under Renmin University of China. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn