China has formal Five Year Plans. Currently, the fourteenth Five Year Plan is finishing up, and the fifteenth, to start in 2026, is being worked on. They're published openly, but few in the West read them. They're general in the sense that they don't specify who does what, but specific in that they specify what should be emphasized and funded.
Historically, the Five Year Plans were aspirational and political through at least the 1980s.
There were some major disasters. Search "Great Leap Forward".
Some time in the 1990s, the planning system seemed to gain focus and started to become effective in guiding industrialization.
The Five Year Plans drive capital allocation. If a company wants to do something that's in the plan, it's easier to get money, loans, land, and such than for business areas not in the plan.
This is different from Soviet central planning, which was more like a very sluggish manufacturing scheduling system that told specific plants what to do.
Updating was annual, which is far too slow for that level of control.
Search "Gosplan".
China has formal Five Year Plans. Currently, the fourteenth Five Year Plan is finishing up, and the fifteenth, to start in 2026, is being worked on. They're published openly, but few in the West read them. They're general in the sense that they don't specify who does what, but specific in that they specify what should be emphasized and funded.
Historically, the Five Year Plans were aspirational and political through at least the 1980s. There were some major disasters. Search "Great Leap Forward". Some time in the 1990s, the planning system seemed to gain focus and started to become effective in guiding industrialization.
The Five Year Plans drive capital allocation. If a company wants to do something that's in the plan, it's easier to get money, loans, land, and such than for business areas not in the plan.
This is different from Soviet central planning, which was more like a very sluggish manufacturing scheduling system that told specific plants what to do. Updating was annual, which is far too slow for that level of control. Search "Gosplan".