Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-07-09
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
China's emergence as the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for approximately 30 percent of global annual carbon dioxide output, has made its domestic climate governance one of the most consequential policy arenas of the twenty-first century. As international frameworks such as the Paris Agreement increasingly rely on the credibility of nationally determined contributions, the question of whether major emitters can translate political commitment into structural economic change has acquired enormous urgency. China's so-called "dual carbon" targets — achieving peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 — represent perhaps the most ambitious climate pledge issued by any developing economy in history, yet the mechanisms through which those pledges might be honored remain contested, opaque, and deeply embedded in the particular institutional logic of the Chinese party-state. The article published in the Journal of Contemporary Asia under the title "China's Climate Policy: Transition, Governance, and Market" addresses this critical intersection, bringing together questions of energy transition, state capacity, and market design to interrogate both the ambition and the limits of China's climate trajectory.
At the heart of this analytical framework lies a tension that has preoccupied scholars of Chinese political economy for decades: the relationship between centralized directive authority and the decentralized, often fragmented reality of governance in a country of continental scale. China's climate policy architecture is formally coordinated through the National Development and Reform Commission and, more recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, but implementation is mediated through provincial governments whose incentive structures frequently diverge from central priorities. Local officials have historically been evaluated and promoted on the basis of GDP growth metrics, and while recent reforms have incorporated environmental performance indicators into cadre assessment, the old political economy of growth-first governance has not been fully dismantled. The article's framing around "transition and governance" thus captures something essential: that climate policy in China is not simply a technical or economic problem but a political problem about aligning multi-level state interests, managing industrial constituencies with enormous lobbying power, and creating credible enforcement mechanisms in a system where law and regulation are unevenly applied.
The market dimension of China's climate policy deserves particular attention because it reflects a broader ideological evolution in how Beijing conceives the relationship between state planning and price signals. China launched its national emissions trading scheme in 2021, initially covering the power sector and representing the largest carbon market in the world by volume of covered emissions. The design of this mechanism, however, reveals the profound ambiguities of market-based climate governance in a state-capitalist context. Unlike the European Union's Emissions Trading System, China's scheme allocates allowances based on carbon intensity benchmarks rather than absolute caps, meaning total emissions can still rise even as individual firms become more efficient. Furthermore, state-owned enterprises, which account for a disproportionate share of China's heavy industrial emissions, operate under soft budget constraints that diminish the disciplinary effect of carbon prices. Analyzing how market instruments function — or fail to function — within the architecture of Chinese industrial policy is thus essential to evaluating the real-world trajectory of decarbonization.
The broader regional and global significance of China's climate governance extends well beyond its domestic emissions profile. China is simultaneously the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries, and its industrial policy in these sectors has reshaped global supply chains in ways that carry profound implications for the energy transitions of developing countries. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has exported both fossil fuel infrastructure and, increasingly, renewable energy capacity to partners across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This dual presence — as both a major contributor to global emissions and a dominant force in clean energy manufacturing — creates a complex political economy in which China's domestic governance choices ripple outward through trade, investment, and development finance. Scholars examining ODA and development cooperation in the Asia-Pacific context must therefore grapple with how China's own transition shapes the energy infrastructure of recipient countries, and whether greening the Belt and Road represents a genuine strategic reorientation or a rebranding exercise driven primarily by access to green finance.
For practitioners and researchers working at the intersection of climate policy, development finance, and civil society, several forward-looking observations emerge from this analytical terrain. First, the credibility of China's 2060 carbon neutrality pledge will depend not only on the design of market mechanisms but on deeper institutional reforms that shift the incentive structures of local governments and state-owned enterprises. Second, the role of non-state actors — environmental NGOs, research institutes, and international organizations — in shaping China's climate governance remains constrained by political context but is not negligible; understanding how these actors navigate a tightened civil society space to influence policy design is an important research frontier. Third, the global governance implications of China's climate trajectory underscore the insufficiency of frameworks that treat domestic and international climate politics as separable domains. As the international community approaches the 2030 milestone for peak emissions, the analytical work appearing in journals such as the Journal of Contemporary Asia serves as an indispensable resource for scholars seeking to understand not merely what China has promised, but through what mechanisms, under what constraints, and with what likelihood those promises might be kept.