A “five-year plan” is a comprehensive policy blueprint released every five years to guide China’s overall economic and social development. The system was first used by the Soviet Union in 1928 and later adopted by the Communist party of China to set out economic quotas for the newly founded People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao Zedong led the drafting of the country’s first “five-year plan”, which ran from 1953 to 1957. Since then, China has released and implemented successive “five-year plans”, which inform all policymaking at national, sectoral, provincial and regional levels for the period they govern. The overarching plans should not be confused with province- or topic-specific “five-year plans”, which are often released later in the five-year plan period by specific government ministries or local governments.