The year 2020 is critical to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), as the country's leadership has pledged to build a well-off society in an all-round way by then. Almost every industry has its individual (as well as collective) five-year plan with specific objectives and ways to implement it. And unlike many others, the dairy industry has a qualitative-oriented, rather than quantity-oriented, five-year plan.

"China will have a world-class, advanced dairy industry by 2020", says the national dairy industry development plan jointly released by relevant ministries recently.

The plan has detailed blueprints for the next three years of development, covering the entire industrial chain, from cattle farms to quality inspection. It promises that, by 2020 every drop of milk produced in China will be as safe as milk produced in any foreign country.