The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was held in Beijing from October 20 to 23, 2025, during which it adopted the Proposal for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2026–2030). Convened amid intensifying U.S.–China tensions and a global economic slowdown, the session’s agenda and policy language reflected not only internal adjustments but also Beijing’s attempt to craft an institutionalized response to external pressures.

This plenary session was more than a policy review—it was a symbolic ritual of institutional continuity and political stability. While much external commentary focused on succession and factional politics, the real core lay elsewhere: the CCP sought to re-articulate the political grammar and legitimacy of “Chinese-style modernization” through the narrative framework of New Quality Productive Forces (新質生產力).

The elevation of this concept signifies a shift in China’s economic governance—from factor-driven to technology-driven growth, and from quantitative expansion to structural transformation. It is not merely an economic strategy but also a political statement, symbolizing the Party’s effort to sustain developmental legitimacy through technological autonomy and institutional confidence under dual pressures of external containment and domestic restructuring. Politically speaking, the Fourth Plenum was not a site of deliberation but a carefully choreographed act of “scripted politics,” in which institutional language and ritualized performance reaffirmed the Party’s central authority and developmental direction.

The session communiqué emphasized “strengthening the real economy, advancing green transformation, and expanding high-level openness,” revealing a governance approach that balances technological control with social stability. The repeated invocation of the “Five Stabilities”—stabilizing the economy, employment, enterprises, markets, and expectations—underscored the Party’s call for local governments to defuse fiscal risks and uphold administrative cohesion. Together, these measures form a strategic pivot through which China seeks to maintain regime stability via institutional resilience and technological narratives amid slower growth and sharper global competition.

I. From Political Script to Institutional Performance: The Ritual Function of the Plenum

To understand the CCP’s plenary meetings, one must first grasp their scripted nature. The Fourth Plenum was not an arena for policy debate or negotiation but a public endorsement of pre-decided lines. Every agenda item, document, and even the rhetorical phrasing had been settled during closed-door consultations long before the event. By the time the meeting convened, it was no longer a stage of discussion but one of performance.

Western media tend to interpret such sessions through the lens of succession or factional competition, a perspective that misses the point. Since the 19th Party Congress, the CCP’s succession mechanism has abandoned the “designated successor” model. Through constitutional amendment, institutional realignment, and consolidation of the “core,” Xi Jinping has merged personal authority with systemic structure. In this configuration, leadership succession has become an unspeakable topic—superseded by the emphasis on political stability and policy continuity. The political task of this Fourth Plenum, therefore, was to reaffirm the legitimacy of that governing paradigm.

II. Compressed Political Tempo

The postponement of the Third Plenary Session by a full year forced the schedule of the Fourth and Fifth Plenums into an unusually compressed timeframe. Traditionally, the Fifth Plenum deliberates on the upcoming Five-Year Plan, yet this time Beijing moved the discussion of the 15th Plan forward to the Fourth. This pre-positioned arrangement not only reflects passive temporal adjustment but also the leadership’s proactive effort to reassert control over political timing and policy rhythm.

In the CCP’s political cadence, the Fifth Plenum has conventionally focused on economic planning, whereas the Fourth tends to address governance and institutional reform. Their fusion in 2025 suggests Xi’s intention to fuse institutional design with developmental strategy—binding governance stability to economic trajectory. This alignment also synchronizes with the March 2026 “Two Sessions,” during which the National Development Plan Outline will be tabled, thereby reinforcing the Party-State hierarchy of “Party leads the government, the government drives the law.”

III. New Quality Productive Forces: The Core Narrative of Chinese-Style Modernization

Compared with the “high-quality development” theme of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the new 15th Plan centers on technological self-reliance and industrial upgrading, forming a new national narrative. The Fourth Plenum emphasized fostering New Quality Productive Forces through original innovation, breakthroughs in core technologies, and deep integration of technological and industrial innovation.

Originally introduced by Xi Jinping in 2023 and formally incorporated into the 2024 Government Work Report, the concept has now been elevated to a national strategic level. It signals China’s transition from “quality growth” to “technology-driven” development. More than a call for innovation, it redefines the very logic of productivity. Five dimensions are expected to shape this transformation: AI-enabled production, digital industrialization, high-end manufacturing, green energy transition, and security-oriented resilience. The idea serves as both a response to U.S. technological containment and a form of institutional translation—politicizing “innovation-driven development” into a source of ideological legitimacy.

Under this narrative, the 15th Five-Year Plan becomes not merely an economic blueprint but a political declaration. By advancing “technological self-reliance” and “institutional innovation” in tandem, Beijing aims to build an inward-circulating system capable of withstanding external shocks. The Central Economic Work Conference’s warning to “avoid innovation that leads to overcapacity” highlights the intent to guide industrial policy through centralized resource allocation and data governance—ensuring that New Quality Productive Forces evolve from slogan to governing mechanism.

IV. Military Purge and Institutional Stability: Reaffirming Party Control over the Gun

Over the past six months, China has witnessed unusual turbulence among senior officials, particularly within the military establishment. On the eve of the Fourth Plenum, several senior generals—including Vice-Chairman He Weidong(何衛東)and member Miao Hua(苗華)) of the Central Military Commission (CMC)—were placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law.” Merely two days before the session, nine additional generals were dismissed, reducing the CMC from seven members to four, and the Politburo from twenty-four to twenty-three. Though framed as an anti-corruption drive, the campaign bears clear characteristics of political cleansing.

Contrary to external speculation of a “major reshuffle,” no changes occurred at the Politburo Standing Committee level. Rumors of Xi Jinping’s succession or of Hu Chunhua’s(胡春華) entry into the top echelon proved unfounded. The sole adjustment—Zhang Shengmin’s (張升民) appointment as CMC Vice-Chairman—represents structural fine-tuning rather than a realignment of power.

The military reorganization thus serves less as an operational adjustment than as a symbolic reaffirmation of regime control. The long-standing doctrine of “the Party commands the gun” has been reconsolidated, while military discipline and loyalty have been re-politicized. The CMC’s contraction demonstrates Xi’s ongoing centralization of defense decision-making, eliminating potential factional autonomy and reinforcing the principle that the Party commands both politics and the military. This convergent governance model consolidates institutional stability within the framework of political security.

V. The Re-Nationalization of Governance Logic: From Policy Coordination to Technological Rule

Major CCP conferences rarely address immediate foreign policy issues. Although the Fourth Plenum coincided with U.S.–China tariff disputes, the APEC summit, and potential Xi–Trump meetings, such matters were deliberately excluded from the agenda. This reflects the Party’s long-standing principle of internal-external separation: domestic policy is orchestrated within Party mechanisms, while diplomacy and propaganda are handled through parallel channels.

This design maintains temporal stability—ensuring that the political script remains insulated from contingencies and that international frictions do not undermine domestic confidence. Beijing seeks to demonstrate the controllability of “great-power governance” through institutional steadiness, treating diplomatic volatility as manageable background noise.

A key signal from this Plenum is the re-nationalization of development governance. Whereas previous cycles emphasized complementarity between state, market, and society, the new 15th Five-Year blueprint reinstates the state’s primacy in technology, data, energy, and finance. This trend extends beyond the policy domain of Party leads the state; it now penetrates the micro-dimensions of governance through digital regulation and AI-assisted decision systems. Such technologized governance blurs the line between political and economic spheres, as algorithms and data infrastructures redefine the boundaries of state authority.

This shift extends the post-“Common Prosperity” discourse—integrating equity, efficiency, and security under one governing logic—and turns “stability” into the core language of political legitimacy. From anti-corruption and military discipline to debt resolution and data regulation, the CCP has transformed governance into a form of political control rationalized through technological reason, ensuring that scripted politics remains institutionally sustainable.

VI. The Strategic Marginalization of the Taiwan Issue

The communiqué of the Fourth Plenary Session explicitly addressed cross-strait affairs, reaffirming the goal of “promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and advancing national reunification.” This phrasing does not signify a renunciation of unification but rather a strategic postponement. It reflects Beijing’s pragmatic choice to prioritize “development first and stability above all” over short-term nationalist mobilization, maintaining flexibility and policy continuity amid external pressures and domestic adjustment.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council noted that the expected inclusion of Kinmen in mainland development plans did not materialize. Taipei reiterated that sovereignty over Kinmen belongs to the Republic of China and “is non-negotiable,” underscoring the sensitivity of political-economic intersections in the plan.

Notably, explicit references to “reunification” have been gradually reduced in Xi’s speeches since 2023, subsumed under broader narratives of “national rejuvenation” and “modernization.” In contrast to the assertive rhetoric of the 2019 Message to Compatriots in Taiwan and the 2021 centennial address emphasizing “complete reunification,” current discourse privileges themes of economic resilience and technological progress.

This rhetorical recalibration does not signify renunciation but calculated postponement. Facing domestic adjustment and external headwinds, Beijing’s near-term imperative is internal order and external calm—conditions necessary to advance New Quality Productive Forces and industrial restructuring. The muted tone toward Taiwan thus indicates a strategic substitution of economic pragmatism for nationalist urgency.

VII. Conclusion: The Political Philosophy of Controlled Stability

The Fourth Plenary Session’s significance lies not in policy surprises but in the reaffirmation of political continuity. It functioned as a ritualized exercise in institutional performance, reinforcing the legitimacy of authority through the language of stability. By embedding New Quality Productive Forces within its developmental discourse, the CCP has replaced ideological mobilization with a hybrid logic of technology and security. Simultaneously, through military reorganization and temporal discipline, it has preserved systemic order amid uncertainty.

Within this framework, succession is silenced, the Taiwan agenda marginalized, and diplomatic volatility cordoned off. In their place emerges a governance philosophy grounded in institutional stasis as faith. For Beijing, “stability” has ceased to be an instrument—it has become the ultimate objective. The uneventful nature of this Fourth Plenum, paradoxically, reveals the very essence of CCP politics: a system that manages uncertainty through scripting, and sustains belief through institutionalized control.