The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), which will map out the economic and social development initiatives of the central government, will serve as crucial guidelines for realizing the target of building a well-off society by 2020.

Crystallizing the country's strategic intentions for national economic and social development, the 12th Five-Year Plan will also provide explicit overall guidelines for national economic development and reforms aimed at helping China build a green economy and an innovative society.

The drafting of the plan and its smooth implementation will decide how the national economy will be run, and influence the speed and quality of economic growth. The policies and measures it contains should help China to smoothly push forward its energy-saving and emissions reduction strategy and its transition to a low-carbon economy.

Against the backdrop of economic globalization and the problems facing the global environment, the 12th Five-Year Plan will help China follow a sustainable development trajectory and its desire to transform its development mode.

China is well aware that it can no longer hold onto the previous fast economic development model, the one that was obtained at the expense of environment and resources. Such awareness is expected to be at the heart of the upcoming 12th Five-Year Plan.

The Chinese government knows that a sound economic foundation and steady, sustainable and healthy economic growth are based on a well-coordinated supply of resources and a healthy environment. Therefore, the country will have to strike a delicate balance between a fast-growing economy and an already-fragile environment.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the government is expected to direct the development and expansion of the country's investment and consumption towards a much-needed green model. This will help the nation develop and popularize a series of technological and management innovations, which will improve the competitiveness of its intermediate and high-end industries and push forward its industrial transformation and upgrading

The upcoming five-year development program is also expected to focus more on balanced development among different regions through the distribution of the country's fixed assets investment and some major scientific and technological projects.

How to popularize scientific research results and facilitate the introduction of technology, as well as the improved implementation of major economic and technological policies, are all at the top of China's medium-term development agenda. The effective implementation of such policies and the fulfillment of these targets should help local regions create new economic growth areas and help build a green pillar of growth.

Considering such comprehensive development plans and the country's accelerated advance towards industrialization and urbanization, all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, while drafting their own 12th Five-Year plans, are also expected to focus more on green development based on the distinctive characteristics of local resources and their development advantages. It is likely that provinces that are rich in energy, or mineral and water resources, will be able to accomplish the central government's objectives. For resource-deprived regions, a different industrial development strategy should be drafted.

To acquire sustainable economic growth and raise growth quality, the government is expected to focus more on the contribution of green elements to its economic growth. For example, the central government will possibly become more determined to push for the country's economic restructuring, and attach more importance to green contributions when setting the annual average gross domestic product growth target for the five-year period. In this way China must abandon the previous economic development model, which was at the expense of the environment and resources.

To promote a change in the country's economic development growth mode, it is expected that the central government will favor economic activities that can promote energy saving and emissions reduction, and a low-carbon economy. The country should guide enterprises on how to engage in economic activities aimed at energy conservation and environmental treatment and help build a low-cost and high-efficiency manufacturing model.

The litmus test for China's economic development and social progress is the substantial improvement of people's living conditions, including the expansion of public services, the narrowing of the gap in people's incomes, and the construction of a more extensive social security network.

Undoubtedly, scientific and reasonable proposals for the national economy and social development will help China boost its economic development, improve its people's livelihood, and help the nation lay a more solid foundation for the realization of the ambitious goal of building the world's most populous country into a well-off society in a comprehensive way by 2020.

The author is a researcher with the Institute of Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.