Against a backdrop of evolving domestic and international developments, the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCC) organized a webinar on China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) to support the strategic assessment and decision-making of European businesses regarding the Chinese market.
Ms. Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce, introduced the topic of the webinar and welcomed the speaker and the participants. China's two sessions in March placed innovation at the center of the country's economic strategy, tying it to new quality productive forces, technological self-reliance and industrial upgrading. Amidst rising uncertainty in the international environment, China continues to provide multinational companies with a stable and predictable environment. At the same time, we are seeing more and more companies deepening their presence in the country. A growing number of multinational companies no longer see China merely as a production base or a sales market. Instead, they are positioning China as a hub for R&D and industrial chain collaboration within their global strategies. This reflects a profound shift in corporate thinking from in-China, for China, to in-China, for the world.
Helping us navigate these developments is our keynote speaker, Mr. Marcus Herman Chen, Co-founder and Managing Director of China Macro Group. Marcus is a Swiss-Chinese China Analyst, Strategy Consultant and Mediator who advises European MNCs, investors and the public sector on China-related strategy design with a focus on China's political economy and geo-economic factors. He previously served as Government Affairs Director at Biomaterials Science in China, where he coordinated the lobbying for the 13th Five Year Plan and as a Management Consultant with Boston Consulting Group in its Shanghai, Hong Kong and Zurich offices. Moreover, he is the Strategic Advisor Europe to Caixin Global, the international arm of one of China's leading financial media groups, Caixin Media, and he is a Member of the World Economic Forum's expert network.
Mr. Markus Herrmann Chen, Co-Founder and Managing Director, China Macro Group, gave a presentation on Assessing the Chinese Market for European Business through the Lens of the 15th Five-Year Plan. He first briefly introduced his company, China Macro Group (CMG), a specialized European management consulting and research firm, whose unique feature is to combine a geopolitical public policy and the market and business analysis into one value proposition. The company has been tracking China's macro policymaking, including development and reform policymaking, starting from the 14th Five Year Plan, and its latest publication was a primer on China's export controls. It is also organizing a webinar series called Staying in Dialogue with China to curate China-based and Chinese voices into the European debate and into European analysis. This year’s focus is on the four main economic policy priorities as defined by the Central Economic Work Conference last year.
As the starting point, Mr. Chen is using the year 2020, the beginning of the Covid pandemic and the final year before China achieved its first formal centenary goal of eliminating absolute poverty, and the year the 14th Five Year Plan was drafted, which was presented as the biggest strategic shift since 1978. The three main policy dimensions were social rebalancing, being a world factory, and de-risking systemically. The Third Plenum in July 2024 focused not on development policy, but on reform decisions, when you take a step back and think about how to actually execute policy. Decisions were taken about accelerating reforms, in anticipation of Trump going back to the White House. Decisions included the equal treatment for foreign state and private capital, but also accelerating opening up, the cancellation of FDI restrictions, new market access, a new positive list, a reduced negative list, and also visa-free travel schemes.
The Fourth Plenum was in October last year, providing the outline of the 15th Five Year Plan, using more proactive wording and saying that China needs to shape the external environment. There is new wording about supporting the Global South and collective self-strengthening, a sign of how China thinks strategically. China wants to shape the international political order towards a multipolar order, and to continue to keep economic globalization as active as possible. There have been 64 export control actions since 1997. The main change since 2020 is that China has used much more geo-economic logic in using its export controls.
Five-year planning is a system, launched by the National Five Year Plan with functional and local five year plans on lower levels. The Plan has 18 chapters, and goes through economic policy, social policy, and ending on security and governance topics, before then going to the goals set by the plan and implementation of the Plan.
Mr. Chen highlighted 10 key evolutions:
1. New Quality Productive Forces (NQPF)-centered next-level industrial policy framework
2. Deepening industry-university-research integration
3. Pushing for large-scale AI deployment across sectors
4. Service economy as a consumption growth lever
5. Systemic ‘anti-involution’ to address overcapacity
6. Fiscal reform towards better central-local dynamics
7. Novel outward logic and policy support ambition
8. Shifted investment focus to ‘invest in people’
9. Re-elevated ambition for green transition
10. Deepening geo-economic capacity for security interests
There are some key evolutions from the 14th Five Year Plan. On anti-involution, there are systemic and sector-level measures that are being taken, ranging from restricting local government policy support, which is a dramatic change in China's political economy, to price war governance, and sector-level specific measures, like raising industrial, quality and safety standards, but also governing exports in NEVs. There is this new industrial tech policy framework replacing Made in China, and finally, investing in people or social policy.
Strategy inputs for European business:
Getting China right
• Policy trajectory since 2020/2021
• China’s strategic playbook in dealing with Trump 2.0
Key risks in European / HQ decision-making
• Lack of IR + country / China development macro scenarios
• Risk of “self-over-politicization”, betting on European protection(ism)
• Not evolving towards a more “multipolar” mindset
China as emerging tech winner?
• Collaborate more forcefully, compete more forcefully, blend for good balance
◦ Collaborating with Chinese (state) capital – in China, third-markets and home market?
• Using China as a value creation system?
Key strategy factors
• Strategic self-awareness – what was past business success in the Chinese market really driven by?
• Rational long-term decision-making
◦ Yet: stricter holding / PE investment logic at HQ?
• “Operating like a Chinese firm”
◦ Localization ambition level?
◦ “Tactical strategies”
• • Execution?
◦ Foundation = HQ-subsidiary alignment
A Q&A Session concluded the webinar.
