In March 2026, China convened its annual Two Sessions, referring to the consecutive meetings of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China’s top political advisory body, and the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature, whose work included legislation to progress further the integration of national minorities into the majority Chinese cultural, linguistic and political fabric.

The agenda of the Two Sessions generally features review of the prior year’s economic performance and policy implementation and the setting of policy priorities for the year ahead. In 2026, however, the meetings carried added significance as they coincided with the launch of a new five‑year planning cycle under China’s national development framework.

During its meeting, the NPC reviewed the Report on the Work of the Government (the Government Work Report),¹ the Report on the Execution of the Central and Local Budgets for 2025 and on the Draft Central and Local Budgets for 2026 (the MOF Report),² the Report on the Implementation of the 2025 Plan for National Economic and Social Development and on the 2026 Draft Plan for National Economic and Social Development (the NDRC Report),³ the Draft Outline of the 15th Five‑Year Plan (2026–2030), which was approved on March 12, 2026 (the 15th Five-Year Plan),⁴ and the Report on the Work of the Standing Committee of the NPC (the NPCSC Work Report).⁵ While the annual reports signal China’s policy priorities for 2026, the launch of the 15th Five‑Year Plan offers an early view into the policy framework likely to shape China’s economic and regulatory environment through 2030. This convergence of annual policymaking and long-term strategic planning makes this year’s Two Sessions particularly important for business audiences.

This client alert provides an overview of the 2026 Two Sessions, the 15th Five‑Year Plan, and selected key policy signals as well as legal developments that may have implications for companies doing business in or with China.

The 2026 Two Sessions Mark the Start of a New Planning Cycle

The Two Sessions are typically held each March in Beijing. The CPPCC, serving as a political advisory body, provides policy advice and submits proposals on political, economic and social issues to government authorities. The NPC, as the supreme organ of state power that is itself subordinate to the Communist Party of China, reviews and approves the Government Work Report, the MOF Report and the NDRC Report, and considers major legislative and other significant state matters. Together, the Two Sessions function as an annual central forum in which national priorities are reviewed, debated and translated into the policy agenda for the year ahead, the parameters and to a large extent of which have previously been determined by the senior Party leadership.

Separately, five‑year planning has long been a core feature of China’s governance framework inherited from the former Soviet Union. Since the launch of the First Five‑Year Plan in 1953,⁶ China has formulated and implemented 14 five‑year plans, using them as the principal medium‑term development blueprints to guide the country over the past seven decades. On March 12, 2026, China adopted the National Development Planning Law,⁷ which codifies its five-year planning system, establishing the formal role of this system in the country’s governance structure.⁸

The 15th Five‑Year Plan is particularly significant on its own terms. Official commentary has described the 2026–2030 period as playing a “pivotal connecting role” in China’s longer‑term development trajectory toward the “basic realization of socialist modernization by 2035.”⁹ The 14th Five‑Year Plan (2021–2025) is characterized as having laid a solid foundation, while the 16th Five‑Year Plan (2031–2035) is expected to represent a concluding phase in China’s achievement of basic socialist modernization,¹⁰ which signifies significantly enhanced economic strength, scientific and technological capacity, and overall national strength, on the path to 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic of China, by which time China will have fully built a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.¹¹ For business readers, this positioning underscores the importance of the 2026 Two Sessions, which provide an early indication of the policy framework that is likely to guide China’s development and regulatory priorities through the end of the decade.

Key Policy Signals

The significance of the Two Sessions lies in the signals they convey regarding China’s priorities for 2026 and the entire five‑year period. Highlighted below are selected policy signals that may be of particular relevance to companies doing business in or with China.

Foreign Trade: Stability, Structure and External Engagement

On foreign trade policy, the 2026 Two Sessions signaled continuity with targeted support rather than any dramatic reset. The clearest message was the continued emphasis on “keep[ing] the volume of foreign trade stable and refin[ing] its mix.”¹² As stated in the Government Work Report, China will support enterprises in optimizing resource allocation on the global market, expand credit and export credit insurance support, and further develop the “cross-border e-commerce plus  overseas warehouses” model, and advance digital trade and green trade.¹³ The NDRC Report points in the same direction, highlighting export diversification, wider global market engagement and continued support for external economic cooperation.¹⁴ The NDRC Report says China remains committed to the multilateral trading system centered on the World Trade Organization and will actively participate in and expand cooperation through mechanisms such as G20, APEC and BRICS.¹⁵ Read together, these signals suggest that China’s trade posture remains focused on stability, broadening channels of market access and the alignment of trade policy with other broader development priorities. These signals do not indicate any intention to take measures to reduce China’s trade surplus, and indicate only modest steps to increase domestic consumption.

Emerging Technologies and AI: Integrating Technology Ecosystems

The 2026 Two Sessions identify the technology industries that China is prioritizing and the policy toolkit the government intends to develop to advance them. The Government Work Report specifically identifies emerging and future industries for accelerated development, including “integrated circuits, aviation and aerospace, biomedicine, the low-altitude economy, future energy, quantum technology, embodied AI, brain-computer interfaces, and 6G technology.”¹⁶ These priorities indicate that China is continuing to treat advanced technology as a central driver of growth, industrial upgrading and long-term competitiveness.

The 15th Five-Year Plan takes that agenda a step further by framing these technologies in more explicitly strategic terms. It emphasizes not only expanding new industries but also strengthening capabilities in strategically important areas and addressing weak links in industrial and supply chains.¹⁷ This emphasis points to a policy agenda focused not merely on scaling promising sectors but on securing the underlying capabilities needed to sustain them.¹⁸ In that respect, the tone of the 15th Five-Year Plan appears concentrated on strategic initiatives, resilience and control over key nodes in the innovation chain, as well as raising consumption.¹⁹

AI is listed among other critical technologies as a key component of government ambitions for economy and society. The 15th Five-Year Plan calls for an “AI + action plan,” suggesting an effort to move beyond treating AI as a discrete technology sector and instead position it as an organizing logic for broader economic and industrial transformation.²⁰ The “AI + action plan” integrates AI across manufacturing, services, public administration and scientific research, supporting broad‑based economic and industrial upgrading.²¹

The 15th Five‑Year Plan highlights regulation as an enabling tool that supports innovation for technological development. References to “sandbox” and “trigger‑based” regulation suggest a framework that allows innovation to proceed through controlled experimentation and phased market access, with targeted intervention as risks arise.²² In this framework, the regulator functions not merely as a constraint but as enabling infrastructure for the development of strategic emerging technologies.

Viewed as a whole, the technology signals from this year’s Two Sessions go beyond a call for increased innovation in individual emerging sectors. Instead, the next five‑year cycle appears designed to support the development of comprehensive technology ecosystems—spanning such frontier areas as robotics, embodied AI and biomedicine; foundational layers including semiconductors, computing infrastructure and software; and the regulatory frameworks intended to govern their development.

Foreign Investment: Continued Openness

The 2026 Two Sessions reaffirmed China’s stated commitment to opening up its market and opposing protectionism while emphasizing the opportunities presented by the country’s large domestic market for foreign companies.²³ Overall, the meetings largely signaled continuity, accompanied by further institutional support for foreign investment.

The Government Work Report highlights plans to deepen reform of the institutional framework for promoting foreign investment, ensure national treatment for foreign‑invested enterprises, implement the updated Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investment, and advance opening‑up trials in selected sectors of the economy.²⁴ The NDRC Report points in a similar direction, referring to broader opening‑up in technology sectors such as biotechnology in which China is still catching up in certain respects, as well as such services sectors as value-added telecommunications services (VATS), financial services and wholly foreign-owned hospitals, measures to encourage foreign‑invested companies to reinvest in China, and continued efforts to improve the business environment for foreign‑invested companies.²⁵ The MOF Report reinforces this message from a fiscal perspective, noting tax relief policies aimed at overseas investors that reinvest their profits in China.²⁶ Read together with the 15th Five‑Year Plan’s broader emphasis on high‑standard opening‑up and enhanced efforts to attract foreign investment over the 2026–2030 period, the overall message is one of continued engagement with foreign capital.

NPC Legislative Developments

The NPCSC Work Report, delivered during the 2026 Two Sessions, summarized legislative activity conducted over the prior year. According to the report, the Standing Committee reviewed 40 legislative items and adopted 24, including new laws, amendments to existing statutes, legal interpretations, and decisions on major legal issues, and approved multiple international treaties and agreements. Legislative actions completed during the year included amendments to the Cybersecurity Law; revisions of the Foreign Trade Law, the Arbitration Law, the Maritime Law, and the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language; and the enactment of the Atomic Energy Law.²⁷

At the Fourth Session of the 14th NPC, held on March 12, 2026, the NPC also adopted three national laws at a single plenary session:

• The Ecology and Environment Code,²⁸ which consolidates and systematizes existing environmental protection laws and establishes a unified legal framework for ecological and environmental governance;
• The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,²⁹ which provides a statutory framework for the administration of ethnic affairs and the promotion of ethnic unity and development, signifying an intensified effort to expand education in and usage of Mandarin Chinese at the expense of minority languages such as Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur; and
• The National Development Planning Law,³⁰ which sets out legal procedures governing the formulation, approval, implementation and supervision of national five‑year development plans, including the new 15th Five‑Year Plan.

Conclusion

With the conclusion of the 2026 Two Sessions, the outline of the 15th Five‑Year Plan has now been approved, shifting the focus from policy deliberation to implementation through follow‑on measures, sector‑specific planning and administrative action. We will continue to monitor these developments and keep clients informed of material updates.