On October 29, the nineteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concluded its fifth plenum, a four-day meeting devoted primarily to laying the groundwork for China’s fourteenth five-year plan, which covers the period from 2021 to 2025. Most of what has been made publicly available about the planners’ thinking is hardly novel—no one would have been surprised to read that they plan to “hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” for example. But one thing in particular stands out—the hope that the country can become less dependent on the outside world, both for advanced technology and as a source of final demand.
Given China’s steadily deteriorating external relations, it is easy to see why moving toward autarky might seem

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