According to a new report from The Conference Board, China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (FYP), encompassing 2011–2015, signals a new focus in the country’s development on “human factors” — from improving education to boosting consumer spending and reducing inequality. Reading the Tea Leaves: The Impact of China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan on Human Capital Challenges investigates the latest FYP, finding strategic planning and program implementation lessons for multinational corporations preparing for the Chinese economy and Chinese workforce of the future.
“As compendiums of official policy, modern Five-Year Plans sprawl across dozens of state agencies and the gamut of thinking — retrograde, mainstream, vanguard — within the Party,” said Anke Schrader, an author of the report. “The Twelfth FYP can therefore seem opaque and even contradictory. But beneath the competing viewpoints and confusing rhetoric there is a picture of the country’s demographic, legal, and social direction that human capital executives need to understand.”
Schrader and her co-authors, Amy Lui Abel and Xiaoqin Li, examined the Five-Year Plan and referenced 26 related policy documents released by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Education, and other government agencies. Among the key findings of Reading the Tea Leaves:
As Reading the Tea Leaves emphasizes, understanding China’s Five-Year Plans is often more art than science, requiring a sensitivity to where party, state, and nation have been to feel out where they’re headed. The report offers outsiders a first key to deciphering Chinese trends.
“As anywhere else, China’s policy reflects a cacophony of rival interests, ideas, and beliefs,” said Abel. “But the reams of documents making up the Twelfth Five-Year Plan nonetheless offer a roadmap to the next half decade of Chinese development — if you know where to look.”
“In today’s China, pragmatism rules — both in individual careers and as a matter of state policy,” added Li. “This means the most pragmatic elements of the latest FYP are the ones most likely to direct priorities, in most parts of the country. It also means human capital leaders and other executives dealing with locals — whether business partners, labor authorities, or top policymakers—will be most successful when they appreciate these priorities, and align their own interests with them.”
The Conference Board is a global, independent business membership and research association working in the public interest. With a unique mission: To provide the world's leading organizations with the practical knowledge they need to improve their performance and better serve society.
The Conference Board works within and across four main subject areas – Corporate Leadership; Economies, Markets & Value Creation; High-Performing Organizations; and Human Capital – to create a unique, enterprise-wide perspective that helps business leaders respond today, anticipate tomorrow, and make the right strategic decisions every day.
About Us // Privacy Policy // Copyright Information // Legal Disclaimer // Contact
Copyright © 2012-2018 macondo publishing GmbH. All rights reserved.
The CSR Academy is an independent learning platform of the macondo publishing group.