China will focus on cultivating new growth drivers, expanding high-level opening up and making new contributions to global economic governance during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), a senior commerce official said Thursday, as the country seeks to secure a strong start for its new five-year development blueprint.
Speaking at a press conference in Beijing, Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Chenghua outlined the ministry's priorities for the coming years, building on what officials described as a solid foundation laid during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025).
His remarks came after the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) unveiled on Monday that China's economy picked up pace in the third quarter of 2026, supported by fast-growing new drivers and fresh policy support. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.5 percent year on year in the third quarter, up from 4.3 percent in the second.
"During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we will continuously unlock the consumption potential of urban and rural residents and steadily strengthen the foundational role of consumption in economic development. We will actively open the country wider to the rest of the world by expanding the areas and regions of opening up in a steady and orderly manner and upgrading our pilot free trade zones. We will continue to advance the 'Export to China' campaign, promote the 'Invest in China' initiative, improve the management system for outbound investment cooperation, optimize overseas comprehensive services, and enhance the quality and effectiveness of Belt and Road economic and trade cooperation," Jiang said.
The ministry also said China will firmly uphold the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core and expand its network of high-standard free trade areas open to the world.
The country will also actively play its due role in the formulation of international rules in emerging fields such as digital trade and green development, and in exploring the joint building of international economic and trade rules for artificial intelligence, it said.
China to foster new growth drivers, expand high-level opening up: official
Iran has warned regional countries that any support for the United States in the event of a renewed armed conflict would be regarded as a hostile act toward Tehran, an Iranian official said on Friday.
Iran would be able to identify which regional states are prepared to back American forces if military action resumes, said Fada Hossein Maleki, a member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, speaking with Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
He added that in such a scenario, Iran could take actions beyond strikes on the military bases of those countries, and those countries themselves will be classified as hostile states.
Iran's Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on the same day that the United States has spent 11 billion U.S. dollars in taxpayers' money on missile defense for Israel within the past three years.
"It has fired more interceptors defending Israel than Israel has," Araghchi said. "That is not a symbiotic relationship. It is a parasitic one."
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have drawn up concrete plans to launch another military strike on Iran after the U.S. midterm elections, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and other informed sources.
However, it remains uncertain whether U.S. President Donald Trump will approve the plan.
A senior Iranian security official has warned that global energy markets will remain volatile "for the next three years" if the U.S. continues its current pressure campaign against Iran.
"Perpetuating the current situation will carry strategic consequences, not least that the energy markets will not find calm for the next three years," Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei said in an interview, published Thursday, with U.S.-based news outlet Drop Site News.
Rezaei said that if another war is imposed on Iran, Tehran still has the capacity to launch missiles and drones at various U.S. assets across the region and will expand its target list to include "cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities."
The official also said Gulf states "are rapidly redefining their relationship with Iran" as they realize that "the U.S. military is incapable of defending its own bases."
Iran warns regional countries against support for US in case of renewed armed conflict
