Five-Year Plan gets a whimsical makeover

China's economic planning has become the latest beneficiary of a makeover from a chirpy theme song complete with a psychedelic music video.

Xinhua News Agency posted an animated clip that explained the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), a national roadmap being discussed at the ongoing session of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, before it is submitted to the top legislature in March.

In the slickly produced three-minute video, four cartoon characters travel through a mint-green and fuchsia dreamscape atop lily pads, China's Great Wall and a Volkswagen bus.

"If you wanna know what China's gonna do, best pay attention to the shisanwu," they sing in the chorus, using the Chinese words for"13-five", an abbreviation for the forthcoming blueprint.

A rubber duck, disembodied lips, a mix-tape, a disco ball and Albert Einstein all make appearances in the video, with a distinctly 1970s psychedelic aesthetic. Mannequins sporting light bulb and teddy bear heads make appearances, too.

Released in English with Chinese subtitles, the song's rhyming lyrics showcase an uncharacteristically tongue-in-cheek humor.

Among the contributors to the 13th Five-Year Plan, it said: "There's doctors, bankers and farmers, too, and even engineers who deal with poo!"

The video is attributed to Fuxinglushang Animation Studio.

Fuxinglushang, which means "the road to rejuvenation" in Chinese, is also an indirect reference to a street in Beijing where state broadcaster China Central Television has an office.

A promotional video it made on the "Chinese Dream" depicted an "ancient and youthful country".

It concluded: "The Communist Party of China is with you along the way."

In a five-minute 2013 short titled How Leaders Are Made, the studio depicted Xi Jinping undergoing training like "a kung fu master" in order to become president, while US leader Barack Obama climbed to power on a mountain of dollars.