ISAS Insights

China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP) was released in March 2011. The 12th FYP sets direction for national development for the 2011-15 period aiming to restructure the economy by encouraging domestic consumption. The Planning Commission of India, too, released ‘An Approach to the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-2017),’ a paper that sets the tone for the 12th FYP paper next year. India’s approach paper calls for ‘faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth’. The two documents set out the key indicators of directions and changes in the development philosophy of governments in both China and India. While there are similarities in objectives, the proposed strategies appear to be quite different. This paper attempts to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the planning process of the two Asian giants based on the text of the FYPs of both China and India.