In March 1986, the State Council submitted “The 7th Five Year
Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s
Republic of China, 1986-1990” to the Fourth Session of the Sixth
National People’s Congress for review and ratification. It was the
first time in China’s history that an all-round plan for social and
economic development was created at the start of a new five-year
plan.
The fundamental principles and guidelines of the 7th
Five Year Plan were as follows:
1)
To put reform at the top of the agenda and coordinate economic
development with reform.
2)
To maintain a basic balance between overall social demand and
supply, between the national budget, credit and materials.
3)
To improve economic efficiency, especially that of product quality;
to properly handle the relations between efficiency and growth
rate, and quality and quantity.
4)
To adapt to the changing structure of social demand and the demands
of economic modernization, and to further adjust the industrial
structure.
5)
To regulate fixed asset investments, readjust the investment
structure, and speed up the construction of the energy,
communications, telecommunications and raw materials
industries.
6)
To shift the construction focus to the technical updating,
reforming and extending of existing enterprises.
7)
To further the development of science and education.
8)
To further open up to the outside world, combining domestic
economic growth with expanding external economic and technologic
exchanges.
9)
To further improve the material and cultural life of all
Chinese.
10) To
strenuously boost the construction of a socialist ideological
civilization along with the construction of a material
civilization.
11) To
carry on in the spirit of arduous struggle, hard work and
thrift.
Specific goals of economic development set out in the Plan
were:
To increase gross national industrial and agricultural output by
38 percent within five years, or by an average annual rate of 6.7
percent, gross agricultural output by 4 percent a year, and gross
industrial output by 7.5 percent.
To increase gross national output by 44 percent within five
years, or by an average annual rate of 7.5 percent.
Production goals for major industrial and agricultural products
by 1990 were: between 425 and 450 million tons for grain, 4.25
million tons for cotton, 550 billion kWh for electricity, 1 billion
tons for raw coal, 150 million tons for crude oil, and between 55
and 58 million tons for steel. Freight volume was set at 9.4
billion tons.
Investment in fixed assets was set at 1,296 billion yuan, with
fixed assets projected to grow by 600 billion yuan.
To increase total import and export volumes by 35 percent within
the five years, while expanding the scale of foreign investment and
advanced technology. Further, goals were set to increase the actual
consumption of both urban and rural residents by 5 percent a year,
and at the same time keeping the basic balance between the national
budget, credit, material and foreign exchange.
In the field of education, to gradually popularize and implement
the nine-year compulsory education scheme, and train five million
professionals, twice that during the previous planning period.