[JCA] China’s Climate Policy: Transition, Governance, and Market
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Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-09-23
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
China's decarbonization trajectory has become one of the most consequential variables in global climate governance, given that the country remains the world's largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases while simultaneously positioning itself as a leader in renewable energy manufacturing and deployment. Beijing's dual carbon goals—peaking emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly in September 2020—have reshaped expectations for what a state-led transition can look like outside the liberal-democratic frameworks that dominate most climate policy scholarship. It is in this context that the Journal of Contemporary Asia's publication of "China's Climate Policy: Transition, Governance, and Market" (2026) is significant: the journal has a long-standing reputation for critical political economy analysis of Asian development, and situating China's climate policy within that analytical tradition signals an effort to move beyond technocratic emissions accounting toward questions of power, institutional design, and market structure.
The article's title itself—organized around the triad of transition, governance, and market—points to an analytical framework that treats China's climate policy not as a single coherent program but as an evolving negotiation between central planning instruments and market mechanisms. This mirrors the trajectory visible in China's own policy architecture: the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and later the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, have overseen a sequence of Five-Year Plans that have progressively tightened energy-intensity and carbon-intensity targets, while the launch of the national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in July 2021—covering the power sector and now the world's largest carbon market by covered emissions—represents an explicit attempt to introduce price signals into a system historically dominated by administrative quotas. A governance-centered reading of this history, consistent with the keywords "governance" and "transition" attached to the article, would likely interrogate how much genuine market autonomy the ETS possesses when allowance allocation, price ceilings, and sectoral coverage remain subject to state discretion—a tension that scholars of Chinese political economy have long identified as characteristic of "state capitalism with market characteristics" rather than liberalization in the Western sense.
Placing this analysis within broader regional and global trends in official development assistance (ODA), civil society, and political economy reveals a further layer of complexity: China occupies a dual position as both a historical recipient of climate and development finance and, increasingly, a provider of green-oriented finance through instruments associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since 2021, when Xi Jinping pledged to stop financing new coal-fired power projects overseas, Chinese outbound investment has been under scrutiny for whether it is genuinely pivoting toward renewable energy infrastructure in recipient countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, or whether green rhetoric is outpacing the actual composition of BRI energy portfolios. For civil society organizations operating in these recipient countries, China's domestic governance model—characterized by limited space for independent environmental advocacy compared to the consultative mechanisms found in OECD donor countries—raises distinct questions about accountability and monitoring that differ from the civil-society-inclusive frameworks typically associated with traditional ODA architecture, such as that promoted by the OECD Development Assistance Committee.
The policy implications of this governance-market hybridity extend well beyond China's borders. The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which began its transitional reporting phase in October 2023 and is scheduled for full implementation from 2026, will directly interact with the credibility and price signals generated by China's domestic ETS, since exporters will need verifiable carbon costs to avoid punitive tariffs on goods entering EU markets. This linkage transforms what might appear to be a purely domestic governance question—how rigorously Beijing enforces carbon pricing—into a matter of international trade policy and, by extension, development finance flows to trade-dependent economies across Asia. For research institutes such as IOCSS that track the intersection of ODA, civil society, and political economy, the Journal of Contemporary Asia's treatment of China's climate transition offers a template for examining how authoritarian-capitalist governance structures negotiate the demands of international climate diplomacy while preserving domestic policy discretion over energy-intensive sectors such as steel, cement, and coal-fired power generation, which together still account for a substantial share of national emissions despite the rapid scaling of solar and wind capacity.
Looking forward, researchers and practitioners engaged with Asian political economy should treat China's climate governance not as a fixed endpoint but as an ongoing experiment whose outcomes will shape the terms of South-South cooperation, the credibility of carbon markets as a global decarbonization tool, and the space available to civil society actors seeking to influence climate accountability in non-Western governance contexts. As the 2030 peaking deadline approaches and the 15th Five-Year Plan period begins, empirical attention should focus on whether China's ETS expands beyond the power sector into industrial emitters as originally planned, whether BRI-linked green finance commitments translate into verifiable project-level outcomes, and whether the governance innovations documented in outlets like the Journal of Contemporary Asia find analogues or divergences in other large emerging economies navigating similar tensions between state control and market-based climate instruments. For institutions like IOCSS, sustained comparative work connecting China's experience to broader ODA and civil society dynamics across Asia will be essential to understanding whether state-led market transitions can deliver the emissions outcomes the world urgently needs.