China's Five-Year Plans have long provided a clear development model for its people. Today, this model is aiming to reshape global development and how the world is governed. The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) goes far beyond China's borders, evolving into a development platform with a truly global reach. This expansion is driven by the continuous evolution of key concepts such as modernization and new development. This evolution underpins the 15th Five-Year Plan through its main pillars: high-quality development, new quality productive forces, dual circulation, common prosperity, and ecological civilization.
Looking beyond geopolitics, in 2026, the massive gaps left behind by the current global development model became starkly evident. The United Nations Development Program's 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index reveals that acute multidimensional poverty now affects 1.2 billion people across the world. Multidimensional poverty is not just about income. It also measures access to healthcare, social security, education, nutritious food, and decent housing. This crisis is not just an urban issue; it is heavily felt in rural areas, where 83.3 percent of the world's poor live. These facts underscore the need to move beyond viewing poverty as mere resilience and instead take meaningful action to reform the economic paradigm.
How does this relate to the 15th Five-Year Plan? Quite significantly. The plan aims to secure the well-being of the Chinese people, thereby advancing common prosperity. How can this be achieved? The material goals of socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era point to global public goods as the solution. China's role in providing these global public goods has expanded in three major areas: resource allocation, cross-border regulation, and direct provision of public goods. Since 2012, China has emerged as a leader in providing these goods, driven by a shift in its governance philosophy, growing national capabilities, and new global opportunities.
China has redefined development with a people-centered approach, which distinguishes it from the Western model and serves as the foundation for global public goods. The 15th Five-Year Plan highlights technological innovation, sustainability, and social welfare as core priorities.
On the global stage, this vision comes to life through the four global initiatives, where deep and fair cooperation is starting to show results. A prime example is artificial intelligence, championed by the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which in 2024 transformed into the World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance.
AI is the flagship of the digital and technological public goods promoted by China. To support this, China has offered 5,000 scholarships and training spots in AI seminars exclusively for professionals from the Global South. Similarly, one of the biggest projects of 2026 is Kimi K3, one of the world's largest open-weight AI models with 2.8 trillion parameters. This AI platform exemplifies the essence of public goods, with its distribution philosophy allowing organizations to download and run it locally on their own servers.
However, addressing the tech gap requires more than just training talent or creating open-source models. A massive challenge lies in infrastructure. According to the UNCTAD and other forms, 80 percent of high-end intelligent computing capacity is concentrated in North America and East Asia. On the other hand, Africa and Latin America combined hold less than 5 percent of this capacity. This lack of infrastructure has even been weaponized by countries in the Global North through what has been described as "techno-feudalism".
In response, WAIC stands out as a key platform for sharing technology, with International Cooperation Centers in AI Application, data and cloud centers fostering deep cooperation and business integration.
While AI gets most of the international attention, industrial robotics and innovative drugs — part of China's "new new three" — will also play vital roles in building global public goods. These technological innovations are designed to serve people. The pandemic taught us a harsh lesson about the critical importance of public health, making health diplomacy a top priority for China in global governance. The country's pharmaceutical industry has become a global powerhouse in drug innovation, with a record 76 innovative drugs approved in 2025. While this achievement has caused a stir regarding patent rights and commercialization outside China, keeping these drugs affordable is a core priority.
As we face the challenges of 2026, building a fairer global governance system is urgent and central to China's agenda. Advancing global public goods will be pivotal in establishing a new paradigm in global governance.
