Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-07-26
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
The question of how the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases governs its own climate transition has become one of the defining analytical puzzles of our time. China's dual carbon targets — peaking emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 — represent an ambition of extraordinary scale, one that will shape not only the trajectory of global warming but also the political economy of energy, finance, and industrial policy across Asia and beyond. At a moment when multilateral climate commitments face renewed skepticism and the geopolitics of clean energy supply chains are increasingly fraught, scholarly attention to the internal architecture of China's climate governance is both timely and necessary. This article, published in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, contributes to that growing body of work by examining how transition imperatives, governance structures, and market mechanisms interact within China's climate policy framework — a nexus whose complexity often escapes both enthusiastic proponents and dismissive critics of Chinese environmental statecraft.
The analytical core of the article centers on a question that deceptively simple framing often obscures: to what extent is China's climate policy driven by coherent central direction, and to what extent does it emerge from a contested and fragmented governance landscape? China's climate ambitions are formally embedded in national Five-Year Plans and communicated through the highest levels of political authority, lending them an appearance of unified purpose. Yet the implementation of decarbonization measures — from coal phase-down in heavy industrial provinces to the expansion of renewable energy capacity — reveals the enduring tensions between central mandates and local economic interests. Provincial governments, state-owned enterprises, and industrial lobbies have historically resisted abrupt structural transformation, particularly in regions where coal and steel remain central to employment and fiscal revenue. The article's engagement with governance dynamics illuminates how China's climate policy is not simply handed down from Beijing but is negotiated, deferred, and selectively implemented across a multi-level political system whose incentive structures do not always align with decarbonization goals. This is a crucial corrective to narratives that either celebrate the authoritarian efficiency of Chinese climate governance or dismiss it wholesale as performative.
The treatment of market mechanisms — particularly the national Emissions Trading System launched in 2021 — is especially significant for what it reveals about the hybrid character of China's political economy. China's ETS is now the world's largest carbon market by covered emissions, and its design represents a deliberate attempt to harness market signals for environmental ends while preserving the state's capacity for industrial management. Early assessments of the system have pointed to relatively modest carbon prices, limited sectoral coverage, and compliance flexibility that may blunt its near-term mitigation impact. Yet the ETS also represents an institutional experiment with long-term consequences: the gradual tightening of benchmarks, the planned expansion to additional sectors including steel, cement, and aluminum, and the increasing integration of carbon pricing into corporate planning all suggest a trajectory toward a more market-disciplined climate governance regime. The article's analysis of this dynamic captures an important broader truth about China's approach to economic governance more generally — that market instruments are deployed instrumentally, nested within a framework of state priority-setting that ultimately subordinates price signals to political objectives. Understanding this hybridity is essential for evaluating both the effectiveness and the limitations of China's climate market architecture.
The article also speaks to broader regional and global trends that give its findings significance well beyond the Chinese case. Across East and Southeast Asia, governments are grappling with analogous tensions between development imperatives, fossil fuel dependencies, and the growing pressure — from both domestic publics and international partners — to accelerate decarbonization. China's experience with governance fragmentation, the political economy of energy transition, and the design of carbon markets offers both cautionary lessons and potential models for neighbors navigating similar dilemmas. Moreover, China's role as a leading financier of energy infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative means that its domestic climate policy choices have direct consequences for the carbon lock-in or green transition of partner countries. The article's contribution is therefore not only to China studies but to the comparative political economy of climate governance in the developing world, where the question of how to reconcile growth, equity, and environmental sustainability remains urgently unresolved.
For practitioners in the ODA and development policy community, the article's findings carry specific implications. Donors and multilateral institutions seeking to engage China on climate finance, technology transfer, or carbon market alignment must contend with the layered and internally contested nature of Chinese climate governance rather than treating Beijing as a unitary actor. Civil society organizations working on environmental advocacy in China and in Belt and Road partner countries must similarly attend to the sub-national and sectoral politics that shape how national climate commitments are translated — or not — into practice. For researchers, the article reinforces the value of institutional and political economy approaches to climate policy analysis, pushing back against both technocratic optimism about market solutions and structural pessimism about authoritarian states' capacity for genuine transition. As China's climate policy continues to evolve in the coming decade — shaped by geopolitical pressure, domestic energy security concerns, and the accelerating economics of renewable technology — the frameworks developed in this scholarship will remain indispensable for understanding one of the most consequential governance challenges of the twenty-first century.