China’s recently approved five-year plan envisions a reorientation of the economy towards a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable growth model.

The new plan lays the foundation for a new social contract, a Chinese ‘New Deal’.

The state is to collect more dividends from state-owned enterprises than before, improving its ability to fund China’s developing social security system.

New measures have been introduced to control speculative investments by enterprises.

Politically influential central-level state enterprises, the so-called yangqi, have resisted efforts to wrest control over profits and investments away from them.