Director Karin Wegsjö follows Amber, Jingya, and Tingting at a stage in life where they are deeply contemplating what kind of futures they want. With candor, they share their thoughts on careers, relationships, and the importance of gaining their parents' approval. Gradually, a picture emerges of a Chinese society where family remains central, but also of a modern era where many young people question their parents' traditional choices of marriage and children. Over the course of the film, Amber moves to Helsinki to study, Jingya builds her career in Gothenburg, and Tingting moves in with her girlfriend in Guangzhou - three voices that offer nuanced perspectives on the conventional image of Chinese society.

My Five-Year Plan is an intimate portrait of three young Chinese women raised under one of history's largest demographic experiments—China’s one-child policy.

Join us for a special screening of doc-film My Five-Year Plan followed by Q&A with Swedish Director, Karin Wegsjö and Drs Charlotte Goodburn, Jingxian Wang, and Ye Liu, chaired by Hainuo Feng, King’s College London.

Film run time – 75 mins

Speakers

Charlotte Goodburn is Reader in Chinese Politics and Development. Before coming to King's, Charlotte was a post-doctoral researcher in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. She completed her PhD in the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge, and holds a BA (in History) and an MPhil (in Contemporary Chinese Studies), also from Cambridge.

Hainuo Feng is a PhD candidate at the Lau China Institute with research interests in Chinese rural-urban migration and migrant women. She previously completed her Master’s degree in China and Globalisation at King’s. Her MSc dissertation, studying gender and rural-urban migration in China, was awarded the Lau China Institute Prize for the Best Dissertation (2023/24) and was presented at the 2025 British Sociological Association Annual Conference, as part of a panel on Race, Ethnicity and Migration.

Jingxian Wang received her PhD in sociology from the University of Nottingham in 2023. Her research focuses on China’s marginalised children, especially “illegal” populations such as those born in violation of the “one-child policy”. Her work has a critical look at the role of intra-family injustice, as well as the co-operation between family hegemony and state power, to explore what really makes sense of human worth in a given society, and what makes children “valuable” to a family.

Karin Wegsjö is a Swedish director and artist working in film, theatre, and artistic projects. She made her directorial debut in 1998 with the short film The Discreet Charm of Bucharest, which was nominated for a Guldbagge Award for Best Short Film in 1999. In 2000, she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Short Film with Part of the World That Is Yours. She has created numerous films for institutions such as the Nobel Museum and Swedish Television (SVT), and has received international recognition with awards including the Golden Spire Award, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival award, and the Bristol Science Film Festival prize.

Ye Liu is Reader in International development at King’s College London and the author of Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China.

This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee all ticket holders a place. Admission is on a first come, first served basis. Those without tickets will not be admitted.

This event is hosted as part of King’s Lau China Institute’s CHINA WEEK (19-23 October) - a series of events designed to engage a wider audience in China. Find out more at kcl.ac.uk/china-week