the next set of challenges in its development. For the PRC's strategy in the "New Era," Xi laid out a broad plan to achieve national rejuvenation with a timeline linked to two symbolically important centenary milestones reached in 2021 (the CCP's centenary) and 2049 (the PRC's centenary). To bridge the lengthy gap between the two anniversaries, Xi added interim national objectives for 2035 and laid out a broad two-stage modernization plan to reach 2049. Further demonstrating the Party’s confidence in the PRC's progress, Xi's objectives for 2035 moved up certain mid-century targets set by the Party going back to 1987.
At his centenary speech marking the 100th anniversary of the CCP on July 1st, 2021, Xi declared that China had "realized the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects." Beyond 2021, the PRC will use the "moderately prosperous society" as the basis for Xi’s "two-stage" plan to achieve national rejuvenation by the PRC's centenary in 2049. In the first stage, from 2021 to 2035, the Party aims for the PRC to "basically" meet its initial thresholds for becoming a "great modern socialist country." In this stage, the PRC will likely continue to prioritize economic development as "the central task," but rather than rapid economic growth, it will seek to address its uneven economic development and inequalities that Beijing recognized as the new "principal contradiction" in PRC society in the "New Era." By 2035, the PRC will also seek to increase its economic and technological strength to become a "global leader in innovation" and aim to "basically" complete its military modernization. The PRC will also seek to significantly strengthen its cultural "soft power" and improve its domestic rule of law and governance systems.
In the second stage from 2035 to 2049, the PRC aims to complete its development and attain national rejuvenation, realizing an international status that Xi describes as a "global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence." A renewed PRC will have attained—among the Party's many goals—its objectives to field a "world-class" military and assume a leading position within an international order revised in line with the PRC's overall foreign policy goal to establish what it refers to as a "community of common destiny (人类命运共同体)," or the PRC's preferred official English translation "community with a shared future for mankind."
Historic Continuity. Understanding the origins of the PRC's national rejuvenation is crucial to understanding how the PRC will likely shape and pursue this strategic objective. PRC leaders have consistently framed their efforts as seeking to "restore" China to a preeminent place in the world after enduring what the Party characterizes as China's "century of humiliation" beginning in the 19th century as the Qing Dynasty began to disintegrate and lasting until the founding of the PRC in 1949. Although the Party's exact articulation of this goal as "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" first emerged in the late 1980s, the Party has championed the cause of rebuilding China since the 1920s. Xi frequently points to the CCP's steadfastness to the cause of national rejuvenation and describes it as the Party's "original aspiration."
The Party’s narrative of national rejuvenation speaks to the deep impressions left on the PRC's political landscape over an era defined by the disintegration of China's polity, repeated violations of China's sovereignty by foreign powers, and the prolonged absence of physical and economic
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
