Late last month, the Chinese Communist Party held the fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee in Beijing, a major event in the country’s political life. The meeting took stock of China’s achievements over the past five years in various fields and proposed directions for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) of national economic and social development, which will be submitted for consideration by the National People’s Congress.
As an important mode of governance of the country by the Communist Party of China, the five-year plans constitute a high-level strategic design that articulates short-term development tasks and long-term strategic goals. Through their successive development and implementation, they ensure continuity of development and provide clear direction for all spheres of activity, including openness to the outside world. Since the early 1950s until now, China has successively formulated and implemented 14 five-year plans (formerly called “plans”). Between 1952 and 2024, the average annual growth rate of its gross domestic product (GDP) reached 7.9%, accompanied by comprehensive progress in economy, politics, culture, society and ecology. After more than 70 years of uninterrupted struggle, China has transformed itself from an extremely poor and backward country to one with a per capita income exceeding 13,000 US dollars, a share of nearly 30% of global manufacturing value added, and a global power among the first in the world.
At the same time, China’s opening up to Africa has also injected powerful momentum into the continent’s industrialization process, improvement of living conditions and economic recovery. China has implemented a 100% tariff exemption on all tariff products for the 53 African countries with which it has established diplomatic relations, becoming the first major economy to make this commitment to Africa. Since the policy was implemented, from January to July this year, China’s imports from African least developed countries reached 39.66 billion US dollars, an increase of 10.2 percent over the same period last year. China has also established a “green lane” for the importation of African agricultural products into China, which has continuously expanded the scale of trade in Sino-African agricultural products.
Over the past five years, China has become the largest developing economy investing in Africa. By the end of 2023, the stock of Chinese direct investment in Africa had exceeded 40 billion US dollars. Since the Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation until the end of March 2025, Chinese companies have made new investments amounting to 13.38 billion yuan in Africa. The 2025 China-Africa Economic and Trade Forum attracted the participation of 53 African countries and nearly 4,700 China-Africa enterprises, with the signing of 176 projects worth a total of 11.39 billion US dollars, fully illustrating the vigorous momentum of China-Africa investment cooperation.
Additionally, Chinese companies continue to help Africa overcome its infrastructural constraints. Cumulatively, they have participated in the construction and renovation of more than 10,000 km of railways, nearly 100,000 km of roads, nearly 1,000 bridges, nearly 100 ports, 66,000 km of electricity transmission and transformation lines, as well as 150,000 km of backbone communications networks.
In the next five years, China’s high-level opening-up will bring historic increased opportunities for the development of African countries, including Madagascar. On the one hand, the large Chinese market will become a global marketing platform for African products. In particular, the combination of the 100% tariff exemption policy and the “green lane” (priority channel for agricultural exports) will significantly enhance the competitiveness of African special agricultural and industrial products. Since Malagasy mutton obtained export authorization to China in September last year, more than 600 tons of this product have already been shipped to China until November 2025. Currently, we are negotiating with the Malagasy side the signing of an export protocol for peanuts, green beans and mutton ribs. In the future, more specific agricultural products from Madagascar will appear on the Chinese market.
On the other hand, the deep integration of China’s full supply chain with Africa’s resource and population strengths will create a new brand “Made in China-Africa”, and help Africa integrate into the middle and upper segments of the global value chain.
China’s opening-up is not an act of settling for its own tranquility, but of promoting shared development; it is not a short-term strategy, but a lasting commitment. As President Xi Jinping emphasized: “China’s door of opening will never close; it will only open wider and wider. “China is ready to work hand in hand with African countries to reform global economic governance, promote a fairer and more equitable international order, and raise the common voice of developing countries in the areas of trade, investment and economic facilitation — so as to jointly write a new chapter of shared development.
By HE JI Ping, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of Madagascar
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