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China has committed to implement both the 13th Five-Year Plan and the Official Position Paper on the 2030 Agenda. Both comprise components that address the SDGs and thus the following mapping exercise examines both documents together.The two guiding principles of the 13th Five-Year Plan (hereafter 'FYP') are as follows: 1) to undertake further reform to strengthen the decisive role of the market and improve the role of the state; 2) to maintain the leadership of the Communist Party and strengthen its capacity and role. These two guiding principles are intended to modernize and strengthen governing capacity, which is considered essential for the successful development of China.The Sustainable Development Goals (hereafter 'SDGs' or '2030 Agenda') and the 13th Five Year Plan or 'China's Position Paper on the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development' are broadly in alignment, with the exception of gender equality. However, it would be inaccurate to conclude that gender equality issues in China will not be addressed during the period 2016-20. Policies such as poverty alleviation, and improvement of equal access and affordability of education and healthcare services would automatically target women as they are currently the disadvantaged groups in these policy areas. However, some of the other policy areas do not address gender issues at all.Despite broad alignment between the FYP and the SDGs, differences can be observed at the target and indicator levels. The SDGs have 17 goals, 169 targets and 230 indicators, and the FYP contains 25 targets in four categories, of which 13 have quantitative requirements which are therefore binding. Our comparison reveals that 50 indicators in the SDGS are fully covered in the FYP, 70 indicators appear partially, and 119 indicators are not reflected. The highest numbers of common targets between the SDGs and the FYP occur in the areas of poverty reduction, health, clean water and protecting life on land. Conversely, indicators in the areas of reduced inequalities, gender inequality, decent work, peace and partnerships are under-represented in the FYP.The 2030 Agenda stresses the importance of reducing inequality. This is echoed in the FYP, which incorporates targets on narrowing the income gap and significantly improving the income of low income groups, in addition to increasing the proportion of the country's middle class. However, there is a significant divergence between the detailed targets on inequality in the SDGs and the FYP. The SDGs focus on reducing inequality through addressing inter-group disparities, particularly women and children, in all policy areas. The FYP does not have clear targets aimed at reducing inter-group inequality. However, potential exists for the detailed indicators in the SDGs to be built into the Accurate Poverty Reduction Agenda (APRA) and incoming national plans for education and health, respectively. Poverty is a national level priority and a whole set of institutional arrangements have been established to achieve this goal. This allows a considerable degree of certainty in predicting that China will continue as a world leader in eradicating absolute poverty and hunger. Poverty reduction in the FYP primarily focuses on people living below the poverty line. However, two concerns arise from the emphasis placed by the central government on this initiative. First, local governments, under pressure from the top, may take an easy approach to reducing poverty by "giving fish," rather than following guidance from the central government to combine "teaching how to fish" with "giving fish." In this regard, SDG targets such as the empowerment of vulnerable groups and mobilizing non-public sectors may help China to set up more targeted policy targets and make use of diverse resources to achieve poverty reduction goals. . The second concern relates to the near-poor, which are not addressed as part of the FYP poverty reduction initiatives. The concern in the SDGs about people at the periphery of poverty may provide impetus for China to strengthen its poverty reduction program in future.Both the SDGs and the FYP put great emphasis on innovation. The FYP highlights the importance of capacity-building for innovation, and considers innovation to be an important tool to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth. The 2030 Agenda links innovation to the delivery of social benefits and economic growth. The SDGs are therefore of assistance to China in specifying the desired social and environmental outcomes from growth.Many goals and targets in the SDGs and the FYP require inter-sectoral actions. This poses two challenges to China: there needs to be better coordination between different sectors, and measuring the performances in reaching these targets is more complicated. A large part of the FYP is devoted to capacity and institution-building to deliver complex policy agendas. The Chinese government has also established a set of dedicated institutions for planning, implementing and monitoring the progress of SDGs at both the national and global levels. However, these are not sufficient. There needs to be more resources for the implementation, and there should be sound performance measurement and evaluation to be able to implement the policies, and ultimately to be able to tell the actual outcomes. In China, funding and resources at various levels of governments often do not match. The governments' ability to collect data to monitor and evaluate the progress is also not yet up to the challenges posed by SDGs. These challenges, however, may inspire reforms in the tax system and public spending, stimulate technological innovation and create opportunities for public participation.