'Resilience' Takes Center Stage in China's Latest Five-Year Blueprint

China's latest five-year blueprint plan includes "resilience," a concept that scholars, policymakers, and industry leaders have discussed at recent forums and meetings.

Originally a physics concept, resilience is the ability of a substance or object to recover from being bent, stretched, or crushed. It means the ability to recover from setbacks, failures, loss, or hardships in humans and societies.

The term now covers economic development, national security, climate change, and the energy crisis.

"It is in close relationship with the rapid changes in the external environment," said Wang Jiaxi, a researcher at the applied economics research center under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "We used to stress sustainability in economic development, and now it turns into resilience when the world faces more geopolitical tensions, trade barriers, and uncharted actions."

Wang advised early, forward-thinking plans to maintain economic resilience.

"China has made a 3-tier structure for its industrial development to enhance economic security and get itself prepared for potential challenges," Wang said.

The three tiers are traditional industries that need to be digitized, leading industries like semiconductors, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence that need to be improved, and future industries that need "patient capital."

Zhan Yubo, deputy director of the economics research center at SASS, said China's economic resilience has been greatly improved, which can be identified in its contrasted performance in 2025 compared with that in 2018 when trade tariff disputes with the US both occurred.

Duke Kunshan University hosted the 2026 Duke International Forum last week, focusing on resilience. Under the theme "Weaving Natural Systems, Building Resilient Legacies," the forum discussed ecosystem resilience, biodiversity conservation, sustainable development, and resilience investments.

The theme of the forum, according to DKU Executive Vice Chancellor John Quelch, reflects the growing recognition of the deep interconnectedness between environmental sustainability, economic development, and social resilience.

His solution to develop resilience is to have backup plans with accurate calculations of costs and benefits. In short, to have good buffers.

"The focus is not on being upset…What these challenges highlight is that there have to be backup plans and backup reserves to deal with the shock: backup supply has to be in reserve… The current crisis in the Middle East indicated the fragility in the supply chain for oils, and alternative channels have to be explored," said Quelch at the sidelines of the forum.

From the perspective of multinationals, Li Jiaming, a partner of Deloitte China, said innovation will serve a more important role in addressing challenges, especially in energy transition.

"China has widely adopted renewable energy technologies and leads globally in both the deployment of renewable energy and the production capacity of clean energy equipment," Li said at a forum hosted by Deloitte on Wednesday.

"A fully integrated innovation ecosystem spanning research and development, manufacturing, and real-world application has taken shape."

Li asserted that China's rapid transformation into a key global innovation source is a result of the restructuring of global industrial chains. China's new wave of innovation is replacing the "in China, for China" model with "in China, for the world."