China’s Fourth Plenum: Towards a fortress economy while reasserting control

Seven times during the five years of each Central Committee, China’s political calendar is punctuated by a series of “plenums” — closed-door meetings of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Central Committee that shape the nation’s trajectory. The recently concluded Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, held in Beijing from October 20 to 23, was one such moment of recalibration. Plenums may not attract the drama of a Party Congress, but they are where the real architecture of China’s policy future is built.

The Fourth Plenum, in particular, is often pivotal — it typically addresses institutional reforms, political control, and long-term governance priorities. This year, however, the focus shifted firmly towards economic resilience, technological autonomy, and national security, reflecting both the gravity of China’s domestic slowdown and the turbulence of its external environment.

At its core, the 2025 Fourth Plenum reaffirmed Xi Jinping’s centrality and ideological supremacy within the Party, while embedding the tenets of his “New Era” socialism into the blueprint for China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030). The message was clear: the next decade will not be about liberalisation or market experimentation. It will be about fortifying China’s political system and economic model against what Xi called “raging storms” — a metaphor that has become shorthand for Western containment, technological sanctions, and domestic vulnerabilities.

A meeting in an uncertain era

The official communique released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides the window into the Party’s mood. It emphasised “progress amid stability,” “security amid reform,” and the need to “maintain political integrity” by upholding Xi Jinping’s core leadership. There is a striking tone of mobilisation and vigilance, as if China were bracing for an era of perpetual contestation.

Xi’s speeches as reported by various state media underlined this ethos of defensive assertiveness. The plenum lauded the CPC’s achievements in navigating what it called “a once-in-a-century pandemic” and “major risks and challenges,” claiming that the nation had entered a new stage of high-quality growth. Yet the document also warned that “strategic opportunities exist alongside risks and challenges,” signalling recognition that China’s old model of export-led expansion and property-driven investment has reached exhaustion. Unlike the reformist Third Plenums of the past — Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 “reform and opening up” being the most iconic — the Fourth Plenum of Xi’s era has become a mechanism for consolidation, not liberalisation.

The political economy of “self-reliance”

If one phrase captures the Fourth Plenum’s leitmotif, it is “zìlì gēngshēng” or self-reliance. The communique and state media accounts revolve around this term. Xi’s leadership, now well into its third term, faces the twin imperatives of maintaining economic stability and insulating China from Western technological chokeholds.

The CPC declared that its “top strategic task” is to build a modern industrial system grounded in the real economy, with future industries such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing, and hydrogen power at the forefront. This signals both ambition and anxiety: ambition to dominate frontier technologies, and anxiety over dependence on imported chips, data infrastructure, and Western-controlled intellectual property.

The plenum also doubled down on the concept of “new-quality productive forces”, a Xi-era formulation that aims to reorient China’s growth model from low-end manufacturing to innovation-led production. Yet, the Party’s continued insistence on ideological control and state direction raises a paradox. Innovation thrives on competition, diversity, and risk — precisely the qualities the CPC system seeks to domesticate. The notion that the Party can engineer innovation through centralised discipline remains an open question, and one that could define the next decade of China’s economic evolution.

Another notable takeaway was Beijing’s growing attention on domestic consumption, which the leadership recognises as indispensable to sustaining growth amid declining exports. The readout called for “vigorous boosting of consumption” through “effective investment” and policy actions to expand domestic demand. Yet, unlike Western stimulus models, China continues to reject direct cash transfers to households. The logic is political: redistribution risks empowerment of the consumer class, while investment in infrastructure and manufacturing maintains the Party’s command over economic levers.

To that end, officials emphasised improving the “unified national market”, a euphemism for breaking down internal trade barriers and aligning provincial economies with central mandates. The idea is to create a single, controllable, and efficient domestic circulation system — a complement to Xi’s “dual circulation” strategy, which privileges domestic resilience over export dependence.

From “opening up” to “managed globalisation”

Despite its self-reliance rhetoric, the plenum stopped short of advocating autarky. The communique reaffirmed a commitment to “high-standard opening up” and “mutually beneficial cooperation”, a sign that Beijing seeks to sustain selective engagement with global markets. Yet this engagement will be transactional and hierarchical, governed by China’s terms rather than global liberal norms.

This marks a subtle shift from “opening up” to what might be termed “managed globalisation.” China will invite foreign investment where it enhances technological capacity or supports domestic champions — for example, in electric vehicles or green energy — but will simultaneously tighten the political perimeter around data, ideology, and capital flow. This bifurcated approach is already visible in sectors like AI, where China promotes international cooperation on ethical standards while intensifying control over algorithmic governance.

In short, Xi’s Fourth Plenum has institutionalised techno-nationalism as state doctrine. For foreign audiences, it is tempting to view these developments as evidence of Xi’s unassailable dominance. The communique’s repeated emphasis on “the decisive significance of establishing Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position” suggests as much. Yet this obsession with unity betrays insecurity. The very need to continually assert Xi’s authority implies awareness of internal strain — from faltering local finances and youth unemployment to policy fatigue among cadres.

The invocation of “fighting spirit” — repeated across official statements — mirrors Maoist rhetoric during periods of consolidation. In this sense, the Fourth Plenum was not merely about planning the next five years; it was about rallying the Party against entropy, reasserting discipline at a time when ideological cohesion may be weakening. As The Guardian noted, the plenum’s tone combined economic technocracy with political theology, elevating Xi from leader to steward of national destiny.

Understanding the significance

The significance of the Fourth Plenum extends beyond China’s borders. For Asia and Europe alike, this meeting reinforces trends shaping China’s external behaviour. For instance, the communique and press briefings insisted that “dialogue and cooperation” remain the “only correct choice” for China-US relations. But this is not conciliation; it is calculation. Beijing seeks to buy time for technological catch-up before confrontation becomes unavoidable. We can also expect China’s rhetoric on “mutually beneficial cooperation” to translate into deeper outreach to the Global South through technology partnerships and resource access — part of a quieter, post-BRI phase of influence-building. Importantly, by tying the 15th Five-Year Plan to “Chinese modernisation” and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi has framed development itself as an ideological weapon. This redefines China’s global appeal not through openness, but through resilience — a model of governance that promises order amid global disorder.

The Fourth Plenum of 2025 was less a policy summit than a declaration of continuity in adversity. Xi Jinping’s China is entering a period defined not by rapid reform or liberalisation, but by controlled adaptation to external hostility and internal stagnation. The Party’s wager is that by fusing technological self-sufficiency with ideological centrality, it can maintain legitimacy without loosening control. Yet this path carries inherent risks. Self-reliance, when conflated with self-containment, may breed not resilience but rigidity.

As China looks towards 2030, the world must recognise that the plenum’s real message was not just economic — it was civilizational. Beijing is preparing for a long struggle to outlast, not outcompete, the West. Whether that can coexist with innovation remains the question that will define the Xi era’s legacy.