Op-Ed Contributors
Plan key to sustainable growth
By Han Meng (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-13 08:03
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The 12th Five-Year Plan is expected to guide the country to greater social progress on a green development track
The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), which will map out the economic and social development initiatives of the central government, will serve as crucial guidelines for realizing the target of building a well-off society by 2020.
Crystallizing the country's strategic intentions for national economic and social development, the 12th Five-Year Plan will also provide explicit overall guidelines for national economic development and reforms aimed at helping China build a green economy and an innovative society.
The drafting of the plan and its smooth implementation will decide how the national economy will be run, and influence the speed and quality of economic growth. The policies and measures it contains should help China to smoothly push forward its energy-saving and emissions reduction strategy and its transition to a low-carbon economy.
Against the backdrop of economic globalization and the problems facing the global environment, the 12th Five-Year Plan will help China follow a sustainable development trajectory and its desire to transform its development mode.
China is well aware that it can no longer hold onto the previous fast economic development model, the one that was obtained at the expense of environment and resources. Such awareness is expected to be at the heart of the upcoming 12th Five-Year Plan.
The Chinese government knows that a sound economic foundation and steady, sustainable and healthy economic growth are based on a well-coordinated supply of resources and a healthy environment. Therefore, the country will have to strike a delicate balance between a fast-growing economy and an already-fragile environment.
During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the government is expected to direct the development and expansion of the country's investment and consumption towards a much-needed green model. This will help the nation develop and popularize a series of technological and management innovations, which will improve the competitiveness of its intermediate and high-end industries and push forward its industrial transformation and upgrading.