Developing circular economy is a major strategy for China's economic and social development, and an important way to ensure the security of national resources, accelerate the transformation of economic development mode, promote the construction of ecological civilization and high-level protection of the ecological environment. During the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period, China has embarked on a new journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country. Focusing on the theme of promoting high-quality economic and social development, the task of comprehensively improving the efficiency of resource utilization is more urgent. Recently, with the consent of the State Council, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for the Development of Circular Economy (FGHZ [2021] No. 969, hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), which provides guidance for the development of China's circular economy during the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period, and is of great significance in accelerating the green transformation of China's development mode, achieving efficient utilization and recycling of resources, and promoting carbon peak and carbon neutrality.

1、 Developing circular economy is an important way to promote green growth and achieve the goal of double carbon

（1） Throughout the world, it has become an inevitable trend and consensus path to promote green economic growth and climate objectives through the development of circular economy. In March 2020, the European Union issued a new version of the Action Plan on Circular Economy, which determined to implement sustainable product policies in seven key areas, and put the concept of circular economy throughout the whole life cycle of product design, production, consumption, recycling and treatment, so as to reduce resource consumption and "carbon footprint". The new circular economy plan is regarded as an important pillar to support the green recovery of Europe and achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in 2050. In November 2020, in the joint declaration of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Riyadh, the G20 leaders approved the Carbon Recycling Economy (CCE) Platform and its reduction, reuse, recycling and elimination (4R) framework. In February 2021, the Fifth United Nations Environment Conference announced the establishment of the "Global Alliance for Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency" (GACERA), taking the development of circular economy as an important path to promote the green transformation of the economy.

（2） The development of circular economy has significant synergy between resource conservation and carbon emission reduction. The circular economy is based on the principle of "reduction, reuse and recycling", emphasizing the full use of resources and the minimization of waste, including energy conservation, energy consumption reduction and carbon dioxide emissions, which is consistent with the goal of low-carbon development. From the long-term practical experience at home and abroad, through better production, use and reuse of raw materials and products, it can effectively reduce the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by raw materials and products in the whole life cycle of production, transportation, sales and disposal, and can effectively help to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality. According to statistics, China has reduced CO2 emissions by more than one billion tons per year by carrying out circular economy activities, and there is still huge space and potential for emission reduction in the future. According to the research and calculation of the United Nations Environment Programme, by 2050, the development of circular economy combined with climate change policy measures can reduce the global resource extraction by about 28% and reduce the CO2 emissions by 63%. Material Economics pointed out in the report "Circular economy - a powerful force to mitigate climate change" released in 2018 that if strong circular economy measures are taken in the industrial fields such as steel, plastics, aluminum and cement, which produce basic materials, the EU will reduce its CO2 emissions by 296 million tons per year by 2050, accounting for about half of its total emissions reductions, and the global CO2 emissions will be reduced by 3.6 billion tons per year. These practical experiences and studies show that to mitigate climate change and achieve carbon neutrality, in addition to relying on measures such as energy structure adjustment, energy efficiency improvement and carbon sink, we should also vigorously develop circular economy, improve resource utilization efficiency, and minimize carbon emissions in the whole life cycle of materials and products.

（3） From the perspective of China's national conditions, accelerating the development of circular economy is also an effective means and inevitable choice to ensure the security of national resources. From the perspective of resource endowment, the per capita ownership of some major resources in China is low and the degree of external dependence is high. For example, compared with the world's per capita level, the per capita reserves of major metal resources in China are 17% for iron ore, 17% for copper resources, 11% for oil, 11% for bauxite, and only 4.5% for natural gas. From the perspective of economic and social development trends, in order to achieve the long-term goal of reaching the level of moderately developed countries by 2035, China's national economy still needs to maintain a certain growth rate from 2020 to 2035. From the perspective of the new situation of China's efforts to build a "double cycle" new development pattern, expanding domestic demand and activating the consumer market will continue to release the consumer potential of residents, and the demand for automobiles, home appliances, clothing, food and other daily necessities will continue to increase. In short, the economic growth and the improvement of consumption demand will inevitably lead to the growth of resource consumption demand, and the contradiction between supply and demand of resources will continue to intensify. Vigorously developing circular economy and comprehensively improving resource utilization efficiency are undoubtedly important ways and effective means to ensure national resource security.

At the same time, we should also see that although China's circular economy has achieved positive results in the past 20 years, it still faces some outstanding problems and challenges. China's resource utilization efficiency is not high on the whole. The comprehensive utilization rate of some key resources such as nonferrous metals still lags behind that of developed countries. The traditional economic growth model of "mass production, mass consumption and mass waste" has not been fundamentally reversed; The recycling and utilization system of renewable resources is not yet perfect, and the bulk industrial solid waste and construction waste are still mainly used in low value; Insufficient innovation and transformation of key technologies for recycling and lack of sustainable business model; The system of laws, regulations, policies and standards related to circular economy needs to be improved. In this context, the release and implementation of the Plan will play an important guiding and supporting role in solving these outstanding contradictions and problems and promoting the development of China's circular economy to achieve new and greater results.

2、 The road map for further promoting the development of circular economy during the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period

Based on the development results of China's circular economy since the "13th Five-Year Plan" and the new international and domestic situation faced by the "14th Five-Year Plan", the Plan adheres to the basic principles of highlighting key points, problem-oriented, market-oriented and innovation-driven, clearly puts forward the overall thinking and main objectives of China's circular economy development during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and focuses on building a resource recycling industrial system 12 key tasks, 11 key projects and actions were deployed in three aspects of building the recycling system of waste materials and deepening the development of agricultural recycling economy, the corresponding organization and implementation departments of each key project were identified, and the policy guarantee mechanism was proposed from four aspects of improving laws and regulations standards, improving the statistical evaluation system, strengthening fiscal and financial support, and strengthening industry supervision. The Plan describes the road map of China's circular economy development during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and points out the key points and directions for accelerating the development of circular economy, which is highly operational. In summary, the Plan has the following features and innovations.

（1） Based on the new development stage, the development of circular economy has been comprehensively and systematically deployed. The development of circular economy is a systematic project that involves a wide range and is highly comprehensive. The Plan thoroughly implements the overall requirements of "comprehensively improving the efficiency of resource utilization", "building a resource recycling system" and "building a green development policy system" put forward in the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of the Long-term Goals for 2035, and follows the principle of "reduction, reuse, and resourcefulness", from production, circulation The whole process of consumption has made a systematic deployment for the development of circular economy during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. First, in terms of industrial production, we should focus on building a resource-cycling industrial system, and improve the efficiency of resource utilization by promoting green design of key products, strengthening cleaner production in key industries, promoting the recycling development of parks, strengthening the comprehensive utilization of resources and promoting the coordinated disposal of urban waste. Second, in agricultural production, we should establish a circular agricultural production mode by strengthening the recycling of agricultural and forestry wastes and the recycling of waste agricultural materials, and promoting the development mode of circular agriculture. Third, in terms of social life, we should build a recycling system of waste materials, and build a resource recycling society by improving the recycling network of waste materials, improving the processing and utilization level of renewable resources, standardizing the development of second-hand commodity markets.

（2） Highlight key points and focus on resource recycling in key regions, key varieties, key industries and key fields. First, we should focus on municipalities directly under the Central Government, provincial capital cities, cities specifically designated in the state plan and cities with large population to carry out the construction of recycling system of waste materials; Encourage key urban agglomerations such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing to build regional renewable resources processing and utilization bases, and carry out integrated demonstration of green technology system of circular economy. Second, focus on key varieties such as fly ash, coal gangue, metallurgical slag, industrial by-product gypsum, tailings, co-associated minerals, crop straw, and forestry residues, promote advanced technologies and equipment for comprehensive utilization of bulk solid waste, and implement key projects; Promote the green reduction design of key products such as packaging, packaging and printing; We will carry out a special action to control the whole chain of plastic pollution. The third is to promote the "one line and one policy" of key industries such as petrochemical, chemical, coking, cement, non-ferrous, electroplating, printing and dyeing, packaging and printing to formulate the clean production transformation and upgrading plan; Formulate guidelines for the development of circular economy in the park, and promote typical models of circular economy development in key industries such as steel, nonferrous metals, metallurgy, petrochemical, equipment manufacturing, light industry, etc. Promote the development of remanufacturing industry in emerging fields such as shield machines, aero-engines and industrial robots.

（3） Adhere to the problem orientation and strive to solve the prominent contradictions and problems that restrict the development of circular economy at this stage. First, the Plan proposes a series of relevant measures to solve the problem of the imperfect system of laws, policies and standards of circular economy. Second, in view of the lack of a long-term mechanism to encourage and restrict market participants to participate in the circular economy, the Plan proposes corresponding incentive and restraint measures. Third, in view of the difficulties in the statistics of resources and waste metabolism data, the Plan proposes to study and improve the statistical system of circular economy and gradually establish a statistical system including the consumption of important resources, recovery and utilization. Fourth, in view of the problem of lack of land use guarantee for resource recycling facilities, the Plan proposes to incorporate the facilities related to waste material recycling into the overall planning of land space to ensure the demand for land use.