In urban planning, there is a well-known "threshold theory," which suggests that development, whether of a city, a region or an entire nation, does not follow a smooth and linear path upward; instead, progress advances in stages.

After a period of rapid growth, with changes in development environment and technological bottlenecks, there often comes a phase of adjustment and stabilization, during which several tasks must be undertaken: identifying shifts in major opportunities, overcoming key development obstacles, achieving an effective transition between old and new growth drivers, and reorganizing available resources in response to changing circumstances. Once these challenges are resolved, a new phase of accelerated development begins.

China's modernization follows this law. The upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period will not be about racing for speed or scale. Rather, it will be about setting the rules, establishing the standards, exploring pathways, optimizing planning and ensuring coordinated progress for high-quality development. It will be a time for China to strengthen foundations and confront challenges head-on.

From coordination to integration 

Over the years, China has introduced four strategies for guiding regional development. Each once served a distinct purpose—the Coordinated Regional Development Strategy emphasized balance, the Major Regional Strategies prioritized the creation of growth poles, the Functional Zoning Strategy focused on differentiated governance, and the New Urbanization Strategy centered on people's modernization and the leading role of cities in the process.

The emphasis on "giving full play to the synergies between the four strategies" in the Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development aims to create a more effective alignment between the forces that drive growth and the spaces that carry it. The document, adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, held in Beijing on October 20-23, establish the guiding principles and objectives for China's overall advancement over the next five years.

China is placing even greater emphasis on tailored development based on each region's distinctive natural, economic and social resource conditions. Another focus is the integration of regional economic layout and the territorial space system. The former sets goals and standards for development while the latter provides the physical and environmental foundation for achieving them (such as zoning and land use planning).

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the emphasis of spatial planning has been on balancing development and conservation, as China is still in a phase of rapid urbanization and faces strong tensions between large-scale construction and ecological preservation. In contrast to our major progress in environmental protection and regulatory frameworks, the mechanisms that sustain development have not yet played their full role. Thus, the new priority is to optimize the spatial layout for development. 

A critical component of China's regional coordination strategy in the new stage is boosting interconnected development between regions. This has two main dimensions: Developed regions should cooperate to achieve a "one plus one is greater than two" effect, creating greater efficiency, innovation and competitiveness through synergy; cooperation between developed and less developed regions must be deepened. This involves not only financial transfer payments but also market-driven mechanisms that leverage their differences in prices, resources and costs to promote industrial clustering and value-chain collaboration. The goal is to maximize overall economic efficiency across regions. (The financial transfer payment refers to the funds allocated by higher-level governments to lower-level governments free of charge. It is an important policy tool mainly used to solve the problem of regional financial imbalance and promote the equalization of basic public services between regions—Ed.) 

The concept of "people-centered" new urbanization is underlined in the document of recommendations. When discussing urbanization, whether in terms of the urbanization rate or the leading role cities play in driving social and economic development, it ultimately comes down to people.

In this regard, one of the tasks is to ensure people who move to cities from rural areas obtain household registration and access basic public services in their place of permanent residence.

A truly people-centered urbanization also touches upon how social wealth created by urbanization is distributed, specifically, increasing the labor income share. The ultimate goal is to raise overall national income, not to concentrate wealth among a few.

Strategic mobility 

Modern society is defined by mobility. The more primitive a society, the more tightly people and land are bound together. However, new opportunities stem from the free flow of factors of production, namely, labor, capital, goods and information. China has made remarkable progress in this regard. From physical infrastructure to digital systems, connectivity has advanced greatly over the years. A unified national market centered on the free flow of goods is now largely in place.

The next step is to enable the freer movement of other factors of production, beginning with labor. Within provinces, mobility is already largely unhindered. In more advanced regions such as the Yangtze River Delta, policymakers are exploring how to achieve seamless inter-provincial movement. The ultimate goal is nationwide mobility.

Land use and resource allocation will follow a similar trajectory. For instance, can urban construction land quotas be transferred freely between resource-scarce and resource-abundant areas? Today, such adjustments are still largely limited within municipal or provincial boundaries. The same question extends to data resources. Breaking down "data silos" and enabling cross-sector data flow will also be key issues during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

During this period, China's most advanced regions are already moving into a new phase: developing world-class city clusters. For most other regions, the focus will be on cultivating smaller modern metropolitan circles with distinctive strengths. As China advances its strategy of global connectivity, a greater number of strategic hubs will be further strengthened.

Another priority is strengthening strategic hinterland. As property and living costs rise in eastern coastal regions, parts of the industrial chain are relocating inland, where production and living costs are lower. Many firms are building second or even third manufacturing bases in inland regions. These regions will play a crucial role in China's next phase of economic restructuring.

In recent years, China has also emphasized that factors of production, investment and resources should flow in line with the trends of population movement. This marks a shift toward more differentiated and adaptive policymaking, ensuring that both growing urban centers and less-populated areas receive the targeted support to achieve balanced and efficient development. 

Urban population increases and decreases are part of a dynamic system. For ecological preservation areas, maintaining smaller populations and reducing human pressure can itself generate new value.

As China advances toward its goals of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, carbon markets will become a major new growth driver. Regions with lighter industrial footprints, including those with declining populations, will gain fresh opportunities by converting ecological resources into economic assets through conservation and carbon trading.

In earlier years, China's spatial planning focused mainly on preserving ecology and resources. The 15th Five-Year Plan shifts emphasis toward strengthening the foundation for development, ensuring that security and growth advance together. Even amid global uncertainty, development remains China's core priority. BR

The author is a professor at and director of the Institute for Urban Governance and Sustainable Development, Tsinghua University  

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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