The paper presents the theoretical background and the conceptual framework for designing an intelligent decision support system towards the economic development strategy of China (national and/or regional). AI technology plays prominent and direct roles in the implementation of the IEDSS. The IEDSS performs its solution searching process as learning. When conducting a problem solving, the decision maker DM and the system DSS compensate each other with their equipped knowledge capability and work cooperatively to reach an optimal or sub-optimal solution. The 'intelligent' features of the system are configured with an integrated knowledge base management system IKBMS, and an intuitive man-machine interface M-M. The IKBMS is the machine brain of the artificial system, and knowledge is the brain's internal representation of the external world. And the system's model-based aspiration led problem solving function is just its knowledgeable behavior. The M-M monitors all user actions during the problem solving process, and offers user-requested passive help, program-requested active prompting and error-driven active messaging in a uniform fashion. The IKBMS is essentially an object- oriented (or frame/rule-based) system and the desired M-M functions are dynamicly determined by the procedure embedded in the object frame slots. The process of developing a solution in the managerial domain is mostly evolutionary or incremental rather than 'one-shot'. The reported M-M of IEDSS is, designed to facilitate easy utilization and access of the system in a way that is object-oriented.