Plenary sessions of the Central Committee, the upper echelon of China’s ruling Communist Party, are major events on the country’s political calendar. This month’s edition, the fifth plenum, is attracting even more attention as the world’s second-largest economy takes on a more prominent role in global affairs. In the first part of this series, Frank Chen and Alice Li track the ways top-level policy decisions flow down to local officials – and the challenges those officials face in balancing a wide set of priorities.
When many took time off to enjoy China’s National Day holiday earlier this month, stories from media outlets in the eastern province of Jiangsu showed the region’s Communist Party chief, Xin Changxing, hard at work.
He started the day by conducting a safety inspection at a metro station, then visited local shops to see how sales were faring over the holiday. Later, he observed a fire drill before spending the rest of the day checking in on crowd control measures at major tourist hotspots.
As China’s economy continues its transition to an era of lower absolute growth figures but greater sophistication, Beijing has expanded its to-do lists for local officials like Xin who are on the front lines of implementing policy.
Once tasked almost solely with stimulating economic growth, these political cadres are now juggling a set of increasingly complex – and sometimes competing – priorities.
To name a few, officials are taking steps to fight corruption, maintain national security, improve public safety, reduce debt, create jobs, nurture China’s home-grown tech and keep the economy growing.
But under the weight of weak domestic consumption and a tepid property market, gross domestic product figures have been fluctuating. Earlier this year, Beijing said it would aim for 4.5 to 5.0 per cent GDP growth for 2026 – the lowest target since 1991.
While concerns grew about meeting that benchmark after a 4.3 per cent growth rate was reported in the second quarter, a 4.5 per cent rate recorded in the third quarter suggests the lower end of that range remains in sight, pushing the rate up to 4.6 per cent for the first nine months of the year.
All eyes are now on the fifth plenum of the party’s Central Committee, to be held from October 26 to 29. The meeting comes roughly one year before the party’s twice-a-decade national congress, a session expected to feature an extensive personnel reshuffle, including the formation of a new decision-making Politburo.
The plenum is an occasion for Beijing to clarify its policy goals. But analysts said the focus of this edition of the high-stakes gathering might be on the party’s self-improvement and strengthened rule.
Some observers expressed worries that Beijing’s shifting, sometimes contrasting priorities could divert local officials’ attention away from growth.
Alfredo Montufar-Helu, China managing director at consulting firm Ankura, said while economic development still mattered, Beijing’s definition of it had changed.
“Growth [is] increasingly judged by its contribution to security and tech self-reliance,” he said.
Local officials, typically risk-averse, would be paying close attention to the party’s signals, Montufar-Helu added.
“Caution wins over initiative,” he said. “A mistake could cost them more than doing nothing.”
Broadening priorities
While the policy juggling act expected of local officials is not a new phenomenon, analysts said more targets are being set.
“Every day, they might have different orders cascade down to them,” said Zhu Jiangnan, an associate professor of politics at the University of Hong Kong. “So what are the real priorities? Those emphasised more by the topmost leaders would become the ones to work on.”
But what localities are told to prioritise today is drastically different from the growth-centric mandate handed down decades ago.
Then, the binding principle was “economic construction”, shaped by China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping after he came to power at the end of the 1970s. Successive leaders such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao largely adhered to a similar policy.
But Xi Jinping, Communist Party general secretary since 2012 and president since 2013, has broadened what Beijing viewed as critical, analysts said.
First, there was his instruction to “coordinate economic development and security”, enshrined into the party constitution at its 20th national congress in 2022.
At the previous congress in 2017, he coined the term “high-quality development”, introducing another overarching principle to inform decision-making and indicate growth was no longer the only benchmark at play in policy work.
China’s intensifying rivalry with the US has also prompted Beijing to make self-reliance in tech another high-level mandate as it seeks to break the West’s chokehold on advanced products and components, with localities urged to coalesce their resources in this effort.
After Xi visited Shanghai twice this year – trips that were centred around tech – the city’s government gazetted two documents to supercharge basic research and innovation and promote the use of artificial intelligence, observers noted.
To help cadres at all levels tackle the new priorities, Beijing has been pushing to install a “correct” understanding of what constitutes good performance among officials since February, eyeing a strong start to its 15th five-year plan.
The move was seen as a pivot away from focusing on raw GDP growth and “at-all-costs” development as the sole criterion for promotion, placing the debt, fraud and vanity projects that sometimes resulted from this mindset in the crosshairs.
“Nowadays, the focus is on politics and party doctrine,” said the head of a government agency in Zhejiang province who declined to be named. The official, who oversees financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, said she and her colleagues were beginning to make decisions with more caution, weighing the political dimension alongside the economic realm.
“We study political theories and top leaders’ directives and apply them to our work,” she added.
Growth not out of focus
However, this shift in perspective has not left the problems plaguing the economy without a response. When momentum appeared to be waning in the second quarter despite a strong start to the year, Beijing held a succession of meetings, seminars and inspections dedicated to diagnosing and tackling the most pressing issues.
Larry Hu Weijun, chief China economist at Macquarie, said Beijing tended to take a dynamic and adaptable approach.
“Having multiple goals doesn’t mean growth is not important,” he said. “Rather, the importance of growth diminishes once the target is within reach, but rises sharply when the target is under threat.”
Recent actions bear this logic out. Last month, policymakers unveiled a series of measures in quick succession to resuscitate the economy: cutting policy interest rates, offering mortgage interest subsidies for homebuyers and unlocking 550 billion yuan (US$82.18 billion) in local debt quotas to boost investment.
At a meeting of the party’s Politburo in July, Beijing pledged to accelerate the pace of fiscal spending, promptly roll out incremental policies and speed up the transition of growth models for the remainder of the year amid rising volatility in global markets and the second-quarter GDP downturn.
Among these efforts, top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the People’s Bank of China have set up a 100 billion yuan fiscal-financial coordination fund to boost domestic demand.
Policymakers have resisted letting loose a stimulus “flood”, saying their intent has been to focus on countercyclical adjustments and the precise targeting of priority areas, including private and small-scale enterprises, domestic demand and the green energy transition.
Putting officials on notice
However, local officials are frequently reminded on what their priorities are – and how they must deliver. Beijing is unafraid to name and shame as it admonishes deviations in the understanding and implementation of its directives.
One area that has been given extra attention in recent years is public safety, particularly in the wake of several natural disasters. Central authorities have stepped up scrutiny of local governments this year over safety issues and tightened accountability.
Since September, over 400 officials across four regions – Hainan and Jiangsu provinces, as well as the Guangxi Zhuang and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions – have been held responsible for safety risks and lapses in local oversight following evaluations by central government inspectors.
Beijing has also taken a closer interest in localities that have been instructed to fire up their economic engines, examining the results of their efforts in detail and doling out penalties for ill-fated or extravagant projects.
In June, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – the party’s chief anti-corruption organ – named and shamed officials in Jiangxi, Sichuan and Hebei provinces, as well as the Guangxi and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions, for chasing development that increased debt risks and using public funds for projects that did not return a profit.
Businesses get reality check
As local officials work to navigate Beijing’s shifting requirements, they may in turn alter their practices as they deal with businesses, particularly the private and foreign firms operating in the country.
While some firms have acknowledged the need to curb debt and move away from a GDP-first mindset, others have voiced concerns about mixed, even conflicting signals and structural mismatches in policy implementation.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China flagged some of these issues in its annual white paper.
“Central directives prioritising hi-tech self-reliance and domestic national security controls often clash directly with local-level efforts to rebuild foreign business confidence and revive consumer spending,” the chamber wrote in April.
The business advocacy body called on policymakers to create a “proportionate, predictable balance” between national security and economic openness, warning sudden shifts or conflicting signals could lead multinationals to defer long-term investments.
A heavier focus on national security and public safety has been cited by some business figures as complicating their operating environment.
One common complaint, for instance, centres on frequent safety inspections and red tape disrupting firms’ normal operations and adding to their costs. A report published last year in an online content platform run by the Chongqing municipal committee of the Chinese Communist Party noted that some companies were subjected to four or five safety inspections in a single week.
Ankura’s Montufar-Helu said Beijing’s increasing emphasis on security and party discipline has made local officials more risk-averse as they choose which projects and businesses to support with incentives.
“Local governments will steer resources towards the sectors Beijing has flagged as strategic and away from anything that looks risky ... Officials will be slower to back projects that could draw scrutiny, including those involving foreign and private companies,” he warned.
“For them, getting things done with local authorities is likely to be harder.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
