hina’s 2025 Central Economic Work Conference, held in Beijing from December 10 to 11, 2025, is one of the most consequential policy-setting meetings of the year. Chaired by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese president, this year’s meeting coincided with the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, serving as an assessment of accomplishments while setting the policy direction for the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030).
Calling 2025 “an extraordinary year,” the conference said that China has continued to move forward under pressure while shifting toward innovation-driven, higher-quality growth. Over the past five years, despite global public health shocks and geopolitical and trade tensions, China has made notable progress, highlighting its resilience and long-term economic potential.
The conference acknowledged that China faces multiple challenges at home and abroad, ranging from slower global growth, supply-chain restructuring, rising trade frictions, to weak demand, structural imbalances and real estate and debt problems. But the fundamentals supporting China’s long-term growth remain unchanged.
Xi put forward “five imperatives” as China’s economic priorities for the rest of the year, including fully tapping economic potential, pursuing reform and innovation, ensuring market vitality and effective regulation, and investment in physical assets and human capital. At their core, the “five imperatives” represent a strategic shift from short-term growth stabilization toward high-quality development. China’s fiscal and monetary settings will remain supportive: a proactive fiscal policy and a moderately accommodative monetary policy.
The conference also outlined eight priority tasks, including domestic demand expansion, innovation, reform, opening-up, regional coordination, green transition, livelihood improvement and risk prevention. They form the core framework for advancing high-quality development, addressing immediate challenges while laying out long-term strategy.
The meeting called for a growth model led by domestic demand, with coordinated efforts on consumption and investment to remove bottlenecks. It emphasized innovation-driven development and the cultivation of new quality productive forces, advancing industrial upgrading and digital transformation and innovation. It highlighted deepening reform through institutional innovation, a unified national market, curbing disorderly competition and ensuring fair competition.
There should be “high-level opening-up” through closer coordination between domestic and international markets in trade, investment and standards. Addressing the rural-urban divide is a focus, as well as green development and a low-carbon transition under the dual-carbon goals.
There will be a national people-centered approach, prioritizing employment, income growth and public services to improve living standards. It highlights safeguarding development by preventing and defusing risks, focusing on key areas such as the real estate sector and local government debt.
The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference sends clear policy signals and reaffirms confidence in China’s development path. As China navigates mounting global pressures and profound domestic shifts, this strategic guidance will serve as a key compass shaping the nation’s economic path in 2026.
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