Governance Priorities of an Atomized County-level City Born from “Town-to-city” Reform in China: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Texts of Local 14th Five-year Plan

China's new-era reform of transitioning towns into cities is a groundbreaking attempt to restructure administrative divisions, leading to the creation of a new administrative entity known as an atomized county-level city.Thus, the governance performance of Longgang City, the first reform area in China, has yet to be examined.Based on established findings on China's Five-Year Plan-making mechanism, this paper proposes a new method of deconstruction and backward derivation.By analyzing the vertical and horizontal comparisons within the Five-Year Plan system, we can reflect on the relative governance capacity and development strategy characteristics of the local public sector.In this paper, the policy text of Longgang City's 14th Five-Year Plan is analyzed.The prefecture-level city under its administration and the county to which it was originally attached, now running parallel to it, are selected for comparison in both vertical and horizontal dimensions.This analysis aims to shed light on Longgang's capacity to leverage public resources and the focus of its development direction in the initial phase of its establishment.