Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-06-24
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
China's climate policy has emerged as one of the defining axes of global environmental governance in the twenty-first century. As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and simultaneously the leading investor in renewable energy capacity, China occupies a structurally paradoxical position in international climate negotiations and domestic industrial transformation alike. The question of how Beijing navigates this tension — between its carbon-intensive developmental legacy and its stated ambitions for a green transition — is not merely a matter of environmental science or engineering. It is fundamentally a question of political economy, institutional design, and state capacity. A recent contribution to the Journal of Contemporary Asia examining China's climate policy through the interconnected lenses of transition, governance, and market offers a timely framework for understanding how these forces interact, and why the outcome matters far beyond Chinese borders.
At the heart of the analysis is the recognition that China's climate transition cannot be understood in isolation from the broader restructuring of its political economy. The Chinese state has pursued what might be called a developmental climate strategy — one in which environmental objectives are embedded within, and often subordinated to, the imperatives of industrial upgrading, technological leadership, and macroeconomic stability. The shift toward electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics, and wind energy has been driven not only by international commitments such as the Paris Agreement and China's dual carbon targets (peak emissions by 2030, carbon neutrality by 2060) but also by the domestic logic of industrial policy, in which green sectors are positioned as engines of next-generation economic growth. This dual motivation complicates straightforward narratives of either genuine ecological commitment or pure green-washing, and the article's framing of transition as a contested and multi-layered process is analytically significant precisely because it resists such simplifications.
The governance dimension of this analysis deserves particular attention. China's administrative architecture presents a distinctive set of challenges and opportunities for climate policy implementation. The central government sets broad strategic targets, but execution is distributed across provincial and local governments whose incentives do not always align with national carbon objectives. The history of emissions trading scheme (ETS) development in China illustrates this tension vividly: pilot programs launched in seven provinces and cities between 2013 and 2016 revealed sharp divergences in institutional capacity, data reliability, and political willingness to impose costs on energy-intensive enterprises. The national ETS, launched in 2021 and covering the power sector, represents an attempt to impose greater uniformity, but the challenges of verification, enforcement, and price stability remain formidable. The article's engagement with governance thus raises broader questions about the conditions under which authoritarian developmental states can credibly commit to long-term environmental discipline — a question with significant comparative implications for other major emitters in the Global South, including India, Indonesia, and Brazil, all of which face analogous tensions between growth imperatives and decarbonization commitments.
The market mechanisms dimension brings into focus the role of carbon pricing, green finance, and private sector actors in China's climate architecture. China has made substantial investments in building green financial infrastructure, including green bond markets, sustainability-linked lending guidelines issued by the People's Bank of China, and the integration of environmental, social, and governance criteria into state-owned enterprise assessment frameworks. Yet the relationship between state direction and market signal remains deeply asymmetric: carbon prices in the national ETS have remained low by international standards, and the allocation of emissions allowances has been criticized for being excessively generous to incumbent industries. This points to a fundamental tension in China's climate governance model — the state retains strong preferences for managing transition costs and avoiding disruptive price shocks, even as market advocates argue that robust carbon pricing is essential to driving genuine behavioral change at the firm level. The article's examination of this tension contributes to a growing body of comparative political economy literature on the limits of market-based environmental governance in state-capitalist contexts.
From an ODA and international development perspective, China's domestic climate trajectory has significant externalities. China's overseas financing through the Belt and Road Initiative has been subject to sustained criticism for supporting carbon-intensive infrastructure in recipient countries, even as Beijing has increasingly positioned itself as a champion of South-South green cooperation. The tension between China's domestic green transition and its overseas energy lending profile reflects not only institutional fragmentation — with different ministries and policy banks operating under distinct mandates — but also the broader challenge of translating domestic political economy transformations into coherent international development practice. Development practitioners and scholars working on climate-compatible ODA will find in China's experience a set of cautionary lessons about the gap between stated green commitments and on-the-ground financing patterns, as well as an illustration of how domestic political economy constraints can shape the climate footprint of major development finance actors.
Looking forward, the analytical framework offered by this article — transition, governance, market — provides a durable conceptual architecture for tracking China's evolving climate trajectory across what will likely be a decade of intensifying pressure. The period to 2035 will be pivotal: whether China achieves its emissions peak on schedule, whether the national ETS matures into a credible price signal, and whether green finance mechanisms succeed in reallocating capital at sufficient scale will have profound implications for global temperature trajectories. For researchers, the article underscores the importance of moving beyond aggregate emissions statistics and engaging with the institutional granularity of Chinese climate governance. For practitioners in the ODA and development finance space, it reinforces the case for sustained engagement with Chinese counterparts on governance standards, data transparency, and the alignment of overseas financing with the Paris Agreement. The interaction of state power, market mechanism, and institutional capacity in China's climate transition is not a closed story — it is an ongoing experiment whose outcomes will reverberate well beyond the country's borders for decades to come.