China is an engineering giant, right?
The next five-year plan must contend with a switch from manufacturing to services.
That plan will span the rest of the decade and shape decision-making for far longer.
About 370 members of the party's central committee will take part.
They include ministers, provincial governors, generals, a historian and even a journalist.
Of the 200 or so with voting rights, more than 50 have an engineering degree.
They will have plenty to mull.
The new plan, like the last one, is guaranteed to include a feast of major engineering projects,
from restoring wetlands to improving high-performance alloys.
These initiatives will draw on the world's biggest engineering workforce,
which numbered over 20 million in 2023, according to one estimate.
And China hopes to draw on talented foreigners too.
On October 1st it introduced a new K visa that will admit science,
maths and engineering graduates into the country even without a sponsoring employer.
This has offended many among China's homegrown tech talent who resent the implication that their own credentials are somehow lacking.
Engineering has become a source of pride and power in China.
The country is an engineering state, according to Dan Wang,
author of Breakneck, a lucid new book about the country.
Whatever labels the country attracts, its true commitment is to infrastructure and industry,
bridges and widgets, building and making.