Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-06-23
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
China's approach to climate governance has emerged as one of the most consequential policy domains of the twenty-first century, not merely for the People's Republic itself but for the architecture of global environmental politics. As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and simultaneously its most dynamic installer of renewable energy infrastructure, China occupies a structurally ambiguous position in international climate negotiations. The publication of scholarly work examining the intersections of climate policy, governance institutions, and market mechanisms in the Chinese context arrives at a moment when the global community is under increasing pressure to reconcile competing imperatives: accelerating decarbonization timelines, sustaining economic development, and managing the geopolitical tensions that have begun to reshape multilateral climate cooperation. Understanding how China navigates these pressures is not an academic abstraction — it is a matter of practical urgency for policymakers, development financiers, and civil society actors operating across Asia and beyond.
The analytical framework implied by the conjunction of "transition, governance, and market" in this article's framing reflects a sophisticated appreciation of the multi-layered nature of China's climate challenge. Energy and economic transition in China cannot be reduced to a straightforward techno-economic substitution of fossil fuels for renewables. It is embedded within a distinctive governance architecture — one characterized by a hierarchical party-state system, significant variation in implementation capacity across provincial and municipal governments, and periodic tensions between central mandates and local political-economic incentives. China's dual circulation strategy, its commitment to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, and its continued expansion of coal capacity in certain regions all coexist in ways that appear contradictory from the outside but reflect a calculated management of transition risks by a state acutely sensitive to employment disruption, energy security, and social stability. Scholarly analysis grounded in the Journal of Contemporary Asia's tradition of critical political economy is well positioned to interrogate these contradictions rather than simply celebrate China's renewable energy achievements or condemn its continued fossil fuel dependency.
The governance dimension of China's climate transition is particularly significant when viewed through a comparative regional lens. Across Asia, states are grappling with the tension between development aspirations and decarbonization obligations, but the institutional forms through which this tension is managed vary enormously. In contrast to democratic developmental states like South Korea or Taiwan, where parliamentary contestation and civil society pressure have shaped the pace and content of green industrial policy, China's climate governance operates primarily through state-led market construction. The establishment of the national emissions trading scheme, the promulgation of renewable energy portfolio standards, and the deployment of green finance instruments such as green bonds and climate-related disclosure requirements all represent forms of market creation by the state rather than market emergence from below. This model carries both strengths — the capacity for rapid, large-scale mobilization of capital and infrastructure — and weaknesses, particularly the risk of regulatory capture, data integrity problems in emissions reporting, and the subordination of environmental outcomes to growth and stability imperatives when the two come into conflict.
For researchers and practitioners working in the ODA and international development space, China's climate policy trajectory carries significant implications that extend well beyond its domestic borders. China's engagement with developing countries through the Belt and Road Initiative has been the subject of sustained critique regarding the carbon intensity of its overseas infrastructure finance, yet the picture is evolving rapidly as China's own policy priorities shift and as partner countries have become more vocal about demanding cleaner project pipelines. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in which China holds the largest shareholding, has adopted environmental and social frameworks that formally align with international norms, though questions persist about the rigor of their application. Civil society organizations and development researchers must grapple with the reality that China is simultaneously a major source of high-carbon development finance and an increasingly assertive advocate for South-South climate cooperation on its own terms — terms that tend to emphasize technology transfer and financing over conditionality or transparency requirements that Western donors have championed.
Looking forward, the trajectory of China's climate transition will be shaped by several variables that remain genuinely uncertain. The pace at which local governments internalize carbon reduction as a core performance metric — rather than a secondary constraint on growth targets — will be decisive for implementation outcomes. The evolution of carbon market design, including the expansion of the national ETS to cover more industrial sectors and the improvement of monitoring, reporting, and verification systems, will determine whether market mechanisms develop genuine price discovery or remain administratively managed instruments with limited behavioral effect. At the international level, the question of whether China and the major Western economies can reconstruct a degree of climate cooperation amid broader geopolitical rivalry is perhaps the most consequential variable of all. Researchers working on Asian political economy should be attentive not only to the formal policy commitments China makes in multilateral forums but to the internal governance reforms, market experiments, and sub-national variations that will ultimately determine whether those commitments translate into measured emissions reductions. The scholarly literature on China's climate governance has matured considerably over the past decade; the work appearing in venues like the Journal of Contemporary Asia reflects an increasing analytical sophistication that the field will need to sustain as the world moves deeper into the critical decade for climate action.