China Concludes Beidaihe Retreat for Top Experts as 15th Five-Year Plan Begins

China's central authorities hosted 60 leading experts across basic research, frontier technology, critical engineering, and social sciences for the annual summer retreat in Beidaihe from August 1 to 7, 2026. Coming at the launch of China's 15th Five-Year Plan period, the gathering underscored Beijing's strategy of elevating key scientific personnel to drive long-term innovation and self-reliance. On August 3, senior official Cai Qi visited the experts on behalf of General Secretary Xi Jinping, urging researchers to achieve new breakthroughs to support basic socialist modernization.

The annual Beidaihe gathering for experts serves as a major political signal of national priorities, emphasizing self-reliance in critical technology, basic scientific research, and intellectual development as China begins its 15th Five-Year Plan.

From August 1 to 7, 2026, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council hosted 60 invited experts and scholars at the coastal resort of Beidaihe for the annual summer retreat, according to reports by state media outlet Xinhua. The cohort of attendees represented key technical and academic domains, including basic scientific research, strategic frontier technology, critical core tech sectors, and philosophy and social sciences. The event holds heightened institutional significance as 2026 marks the opening year of China's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030). On August 3, Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Secretariat, visited the attending experts on behalf of General Secretary Xi Jinping and central leadership. Addressing the researchers, Cai conveyed official greetings and urged scientists and scholars to carry forward the scientific spirit, pursue pioneering innovations, and achieve new accomplishments across their respective fields to support basic socialist modernization. The Beidaihe expert retreat represents a long-standing institutional policy designed to demonstrate official respect for high-level intellectual talent under the central governance principle that human talent constitutes the country's primary strategic resource. The delegation included researchers from diverse background generations and disciplines. Among the attendees was 88-year-old Qian Qihu, a Chinese Academy of Engineering academician and professor at the PLA Army Engineering University, who highlighted the retreat as both an honor and a weighty political responsibility. Other attendees included Wang Enge, former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Yuan Yang, assistant dean and associate professor at Tsinghua University's Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences and the youngest invitee in this year's group; and Xu Xianying, a veteran desertification researcher from the Gansu Desertification Control Research Institute who has worked in ecological restoration for 40 years. Participants emphasized that long-term state support provides the necessary institutional stability for scientists to focus on lengthy basic research projects and venture into unexplored technological sectors during the upcoming five-year development cycle.