China’s 15th Five-Year Plan: The five years that could rewrite US-China power

The Chinese Communist Party’s fourth plenum unveiled an ambitious blueprint for the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, laying out goals for the next half-decade and aiming for decisive progress toward achieving “Chinese-style modernisation” by 2035. Some Chinese scholars have interpreted the plan as a national strategy to “catch up to the US”. Yet Western observers have paid it remarkably little attention — perhaps because its lengthy, bureaucratic prose obscures its strategic intent.

The notion that China might one day match the US originates in a remark Mao Zedong made in the 1950s. He estimated that catching up with America would take at least 50 years, perhaps 75. “Seventy-five years,” he said, “means 15 Five-Year Plans.”

At the time, the claim seemed pure idealism — just as Mao’s earlier vow to surpass Britain within 15 years produced the disastrous Great Leap Forward. But in retrospect, Mao’s words — perhaps unintentionally, yet tellingly — revealed an intuition about the rhythm of industrial modernisation: the rise of great powers depends on long-term accumulation, structural advantage and perseverance.

China now stands at the end of its 14th Five-Year Plan and on the threshold of the 15th Five-Year Plan. When Mao’s 75-year horizon is recalculated today, it no longer feels remote. In recent years, Chinese strategists have begun speaking of a “catch-up window” or a “centennial convergence zone”. They argue that over the past decade, China has built the skeleton of industrial modernisation and, under external pressure during the 14th Five-Year Plan, accelerated domestic substitution and supply-chain autonomy. Thus, they see the 15th Five-Year Plan as the potential turning point when Chinese and American power intersect.

These views are not fringe speculation; they reveal the deeper logic of China’s strategic discourse. Although Beijing avoids the phrase “catch up” — perhaps to limit international backlash — the 15th Five-Year Plan was clearly conceived in the context of US-China rivalry. The document itself hints as much: it notes that “major-power relations shape the global landscape” and that “great-power competition is growing more complex and intense”. Many of its core targets, especially in industry and technology, are implicitly benchmarked against the US.

Stripped of official rhetoric, the plan’s intent can be distilled into four priorities. First, achieve technological and industrial autonomy at the high end to eliminate dependence on Western chokepoint technologies. Second, expand domestic demand and raise factor productivity to sustain steady, large-scale growth. Third, modernise national defence — from air and sea power to strategic software and space capabilities — so that national security is no longer externally constrained. Fourth, shape global rules and governance norms to rebalance the structure of international economic and technological cooperation.

Nowhere does the 15th Five-Year Plan explicitly proclaim a mission to “catch America”. Yet its direction is unmistakable, marked by structural ambition and determination. Whether China can move onto that trajectory can be judged across three dimensions: economic scale, key technologies and military power. Economic scale is the most visible measure; technology marks substantive capability; military strength determines whether China can credibly stand as a co-equal power centre.

China’s GDP briefly reached 77% of America’s in 2021 but fell to 64% last year — even though China’s real growth was higher. The decline mainly reflected price and exchange-rate shifts: the RMB weakened from 6.35 to 7.29 per dollar, while US inflation surged and China slipped toward deflation.

Measured in RMB terms or purchasing power parity (PPP), however, China already surpasses the US — by roughly 1.5 times on a PPP basis. Yet because global comparisons use nominal rates, the headline gap remains large.

Assuming present inflation, exchange and growth patterns persist, China would need about 13 years — around 2035 to 2038 — to close the nominal gap. If US growth slows or the RMB appreciates — as it already strengthened 1.6% this year — the timeline shortens; if the reverse, it extends indefinitely.

By the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan, China’s nominal GDP could exceed 80% of America’s. Yet in industrial output, manufacturing scale, exports, engineering manpower, infrastructure efficiency, robotics deployment, shipbuilding and defence production potential, China already leads and will likely widen that lead. According to recent UN data, China’s share of global manufacturing may rise from 30 to 45% within five years, while the US share could fall from 17 to 11%. Beijing regards such productive capacity as the true foundation of national power.

Perhaps the most underappreciated result of the 14th Five-Year Plan was the consolidation of China’s indigenous industrial base. Most milestones of Made in China 2025 have been met — in batteries, photovoltaics, smart manufacturing, 5G communications, satellite internet, rail transit and ultra-high-voltage power grids. The US still dominates extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, advanced exploratory data analysis (EDA), core materials and top research ecosystems, but the laws of technological diffusion and scale economies increasingly favour China.

Washington’s export controls have not stopped Chinese progress; they have slowed certain sectors — notably advanced semiconductors — but also forced Beijing to build an independent R&D and industrial ecosystem faster. Over the next five years, China’s realistic path is not to replace Silicon Valley but to construct a parallel technological system rooted in industrial software, domestic compute power, advanced manufacturing equipment, new materials and dual-use integration. If these foundations solidify, China’s technological leap will be systemic — even if overall capability still trails the US.

China’s military growth is exponential rather than incremental. The People’s Liberation Army is evolving from a regional denial to an integrated offence-defence posture. Hypersonic strike systems are now mature; sea-air-space sensing networks are taking shape; nuclear and sea-based deterrence are being modernised; and unmanned and intelligent warfare systems are expanding rapidly.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan, China’s third domestic aircraft carrier will achieve combat readiness, a fourth may enter service, and unmanned fleets will proliferate. Given America’s slower shipbuilding pace, by then the two powers’ positions inside the first island chain could approach parity — or even tilt slightly toward China. The goal is not to prepare for war, but to achieve deterrence equivalence — the ability to win without fighting.

If by 2030 China achieves near-parity across these three dimensions — or narrows the gaps to mutual constraint — Mao’s 75-year prediction will be close to being realised: economic equivalence, technological autonomy and military near-equality.

At that point, the global order would no longer be “US-centred with Chinese adaptation”, but a dual-centre system of competition and coexistence. Historically, whenever a rising power approaches parity with the dominant one, institutional and monetary rebalancing naturally follows. This is not ideology but geopolitical evolution.

Even then, China would not have fully overtaken the US. Gaps would remain in per-capita income, financial control, dollar dominance, global talent attraction, scientific originality, ethics and standards setting, intelligence reach, and cultural influence. Closing these will require time, institutional resilience, and financial and industrial innovation.

Yet great-power ascents rarely wait until every deficiency is fixed. Hard power comes first; soft power follows. Once a nation crosses certain thresholds — industrial scale, technological capacity, strategic deterrence, and market indispensability — its ability to shape institutions, internationalise its currency and build security networks grows naturally. The US gained dollar hegemony only after its industrial and military supremacy; the monetary order followed the factories and fleets. If China reaches a comparable threshold, its financial, technological and cultural influence will expand in tandem.

Donald Trump may have sensed this trajectory intuitively. In a recent interview he described US-China relations as a “G2”. It was the first time an American president had used such a term for another state — and a strategic rival at that.

Trump’s G2 still implies China is the junior partner, but his phrasing captures reality: as the US sinks deeper into polarisation, fiscal gridlock and immigration discord, its strategic focus turns inward, while China’s 15th Five-Year Plan signals a different rhythm — reinforcing industrial and technological foundations at home while stabilising its external environment and seeking structural breakthroughs abroad.

Whether Washington recognises it or not, the China it now faces is no longer merely a follower but a competitor reshaping the world’s industrial logic, technological paths and power architecture — largely as a compelled response to US containment. From the standpoint of strategic competition, the coming five years will be decisive in shaping the world’s balance of power. The 15th Five-Year Plan stands precisely at that inflection point. Whether China’s modernisation drive can translate ambition into reality will depend on what happens in this cycle.

Liberal globalisation has given way to a new realist era of great-power rivalry, in which capabilities and structures matter more than ideology and narrative. A civilisation-state that combines a modern industrial system, an engineer-rich workforce, policy execution capacity and national mobilisation power could unleash immense internal energy once it chooses to rise — though how far that energy can reach will take time to verify.

For Western nations, the lesson is clear: the danger lies not in China’s ambition, but in their own complacency. A decade from now, they may look back and realise they missed the moment to grasp the transformation underway.

Viewed through the long lens of history, the 15th Five-Year Plan may indeed be — as some Chinese scholars call it — a “catch-up-with-America” programme. Its success or failure remains uncertain, but compared with Mao’s vision three-quarters of a century ago, today’s China possesses a far stronger material foundation and a far greater chance of making that vision real.

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