Rebalancing towards a Sustainable Future: China’s Twelfth Five-Year Programme

This chapter seeks to analyse and assess some of the major opportunities and challenges in China’s Twelfth Five-Year Programme for Social and Economic Development (hereafter 12FYP).1 The main economic thrust of the 12FYP is one of sustainable, balanced and innovative development; its principal social thrust is that the government should enhance its support for ‘livelihoods’ (minsheng) in order to create a ‘moderately well-off’ (xiaokang) society by 2020.2