Roughly one year ago, the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the incumbent cohort of Chinese elites, held its 5th plenary session, mapping out the strategic priorities and major goals for the 14th Five-Year (2021-2025) Plan and long-range objectives until 2035. Among all the keywords on the nature of the next five to fifteen years that were thoroughly discussed and widely disseminated by media outlets and scholarly community, the term "high-quality" could arguably be viewed as the most significant one to grasp the essence of China's development, which not only concerns the overall situation of the country's socialist modernization drive but also generates great impetus toward the pandemic-battered world economy. According to scholars who study the theories and histories of the CPC, the usage of that term represents the supply of ideas by the Party, alongside the supply of institutions as in the case of establishing people's congresses at national and local levels, with both being the key to the Party's effective and successful management of Chinese society.

2021, as the opening year of the 14th Five-Year-Plan, has witnessed President Xi Jinping's continuing commitment to promoting the idea further among the Chinese people, especially to getting local leaders on board so that they can better understand the central authority, which is one of the distinguished attributes of the politics of centralization of Chinese leadership. During his three-day inspection tour to east China's Shandong Province and Yellow River basin, President Xi again highlighted the necessity of high-quality development. But one should be aware that this is not the first time. In fact, the Yellow River basin's ecological preservation and high-quality development have already been upgraded among national strategies since 2019, enshrining it as one indispensable piece of the "four beams and eight pillars," the fundamental structure for China's deep reform. Read more>>