China’s Ecological Power: Analysis, Critiques, and Perspectives
China’s Ecological Power: Analysis, Critiques, and Perspectives
Scientific Director of this Issue
Stéphanie Monjon
Scientific Committee
Luiza Bialasiewicz, Pierre Charbonnier, Amy Dahan, Patrice Geffron, François Gemmene, Isabelle Kocher, Cécile Maisonneuve, Stéphanie Monjon, Magali Reghezza, Adam Tooze, Shahin Vallée, Françoise Vimeux
Editors-in-chief
Léa Boudinet, Clémence Pèlegrin
Editorial Managers
Ramona Bloj, Gilles Gressani
Editorial Committee
Pierre Bégat, Éléonore Delanoë, Charlotte Gardes, Amélie Latreille, Madeleine Leroy, Lauren
Lever, Emma Loignon, Océane Mascaro, Vianney Mennecier, Elsa Perrin, Hugo Sancho
Introduction
Understanding “Ecological Civilization” According to China
Dear readers, We present to you the first issue of GREEN (Géopolitique, Réseaux, Energie, Environnement, Nature), a twice-yearly journal published in two languages (French and English) offering a multi-disciplinary analysis of energy, environment, and climate issues. Even though ecology and climate issues receive wide media coverage, the sheer volume of available information — which can … Continued
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China's climate ambitions
Why COPs are Essential to Tackle the Climate Emergency
In 2015 and the following months, the Paris Agreement and the COP 21 that made it possible were the subject of widespread public support and a real movement of hope. As the Agreement was adopted, the acronym “COP”, which in international law is the generic term for the “Conference Of Partie”, bringing together all the … Continued
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How China’s Position Has Evolved in the COPs and on the Global Climate Geopolitical Stage
Léa Boudinet & Clémence Pèlegrin — How has China’s position in climate geopolitics evolved over the past 30 years? First of all, the term “climate geopolitics” is only gradually becoming established in the analysis of the climate issue. It did not exist in the 1990s, either at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, or at … Continued
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Economic Growth and Climate Change — Beijing’s Hard Choices
China’s emergence as a global economic power in recent years was accompanied by a growing role on the global climate stage. But this was not necessarily obvious since the fight against climate change has not always been one of Beijing’s priorities and may even appear to contradict its national objectives. First, in terms of growth, … Continued
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China’s Climate Realpolitik
On 4th December 2012, during Doha’s COP 18, an article summarising Beijing’s position regarding climate change was published in the online China Daily. It stated that “according to one wealthy country responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gases emissions that has yet to sign on to make binding cuts, there is no rich-poor divide in … Continued
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The 14th Five Year Plan in the New Phase of Chinese Reform
With its Hellenistic origins, western political philosophy claims to hold universal values that must be disseminated to the rest of the world in order to achieve an ideal state. This is why the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama believed that the end of History was approaching after the fall of the USSR. This philosophical tradition … Continued
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For an Ecological Realpolitik
On September 22, 2020, Xi Jinping, the chairman of the People’s Republic of China, announced a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality before 2060. Here, then, is China, the world’s largest CO2 producer and leading industrial power, sometimes dubbed the “chimney of the world”, seemingly embarking on an … Continued
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Can the EU Lead the Fight Against Climate Change?
Adam Tooze — In light of the important compromises reached last December on Europe’s new goal to reduce carbon gas emissions by 55% by 2030, I would first like to ask Enrico and Laurence how they view the development of Europe’s climate policy since the inauguration of the Green Deal. Enrico Letta — Last spring … Continued
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Climate as an Answer to America’s Problems
Right after he took office on January 20th, the new American President, Joe Biden, wanted to make clear that responding to the climate crisis would be one of his administration’s priorities. Identified during his campaign as one of the four crises that will shape America’s present and future, he made it the subject of its … Continued
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The challenges and contradictions of China's ecological transition
Governing China’s Energy Sector to Achieve Carbon Neutrality
China accounts for nearly 30% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy. The absolute quantity of emissions continued to rise at 2-3% per year during the decade to 2019, and is estimated to have grown by 0.8% during the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020. This continuing increase of CO2 emissions is caused by … Continued
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Energetic security in China and vertuous climatic diplomacy : the great paradox
The Middle Kingdom no doubt does not bear this name — an exact translation of the characters $$.# — because its inhabitants understood early on that they were “in the middle of the world”. This misleading name perhaps comes from a sentiment formed very early on that the Chinese territory was naturally subject to isolation, which … Continued
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Is China’s Oil Sector Oblivious to the Country’s 2060 Pledge?
China’s oil demand has grown rapidly over the past three decades, as the country’s economic activity, industrial development and urbanisation levels have generated a seemingly insatiable appetite for oil. Indeed, the country’s oil use has surged from 2 mb/d in 1990 to 14 mb/d in 2019, according to the BP Statistical Review, accounting for 14% … Continued
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Renewable Energy: Is China’s Innovation System Adequate to Enable a Low-Carbon Transition?
China has made extraordinary progress on renewable energy over the past decade, and in several respects is the world clean energy leader. China leads in terms of total installed capacity of wind, solar, and hydroelectricity, and its manufacturing scale-up of wind, solar, and energy storage have played a central role in making these technologies economically … Continued
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Civil Nuclear Energy in China
China’s nuclear program is one of the most recent major civil nuclear programs. In forty years, China has managed to gain sufficient maturity to develop its own nuclear technologies and position itself in the international market. It has developed by following the now well-known and much feared principle of “importation, assimilation, sinicization and innovation”. Today, … Continued
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Understanding the New Silk Roads of Energy
The origins and structuring of the New Silk Roads When he came to power in 2013, the new Chinese President, Xi Jinping, wanted to benefit from the “pivot towards Asia” policy launched by Barack Obama and take advantage of the economic slump which the West had been in since the 2008 crisis. Incorporating some of … Continued
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China’s Uneven Regional Energy Investments
In the lead-up to the first Belt and Road forum in May 2017, China published its “Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road,” “Belt and Road Ecological and Environmental Cooperation Plan,” and “Vision and Actions on Energy Cooperation in Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”, emphasizing that its investment projects … Continued
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China’s at the Gate of the European Power Grid
China’s conquest of the European power sector Energy has a very high capital intensity at all stages of its value chain. But most of all it contributes to socio-economic development and has numerous geopolitical and environmental impacts. Today, although energy consumption in Europe is stable or even declining, electricity is a major and growing part … Continued
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An "ecological civilization" ?
Green Transition in China: At What Cost?
Green economics have become increasingly central to China’s domestic and international politics since it announced its national strategy to build an “ecological civilization” in 2007. In this interview, the authors of China Goes Green (Polity, 2020) interpret the Chinese state’s approach to environmentalism, how it is being used to reinforce authoritarian control, and the danger … Continued
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Ecological Policy with a Chinese Twist
Natural devastation illustrates the crisis of transitions in China. In China, the double-digit, multi-decade miracle of growth has turned into an environmental and health dystopia. An ecological devastation looms over and underpins the crisis of transitions, not only on the level of health and society, but also symbolically. It looms in the form of heavy … Continued
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The State of China’s Environment: What Has Changed in the Past Few Years?
In 2014, the Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced that the country would go to “war on pollution with the same determination as the one waged against poverty” and, in 2017, President Xi Jinping declared that he wished to make the Chinese nation an “ecological civilization” before members of the Communist Party Congress. Given these … Continued
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“One AI to rule them all”: The Unification of Chinese Urban Governance under
The premise: artificial intelligence and the unification of urban governance We live in a time when the development of cities cannot be understood anymore as the sum of different and disconnected processes carried out by diverse intelligences. Urban development has always been an extremely complex and multifaceted activity comprising, for example, the creation of new … Continued
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The New Tools of Environmental Governance in China: Top Down Control and Environmental Credit
“… to allow trustworthy people to come and go wherever they like, while making it hard for discredited people to take a single step”. Conseil d’Etat, 2014. In the early 2010s, extreme environmental degradation in China and its tragic health effects have taken centre stage. Several events have no longer permitted the environmental crisis in … Continued
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China’s Contribution to Low-Carbon Technology Innovation
Keeping global warming to less than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, requires the development of new technologies to more effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as their deployment in the economies which emit the most carbon. In this respect, China is a country of prime importance. Its technological … Continued
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Is Chinese Industrial Policy Compatible with its Environmental Ambitions
On 22 September 2020, Xi Jinping made a commitment to the United Nations General Assembly that China would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, even though the country is the world’s largest energy consumer and the largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). This goal therefore seems particularly ambitious in view of its production structure and organisation, … Continued
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The EU and China: Climate and Trade Increasingly Intertwined
The EU and China – different ambitions and actions on climate The interlinkages between trade and climate change have risen to the top of the international negotiations on climate cooperation. This effect is partly caused by the Green Deal of the European Commission, by the revival of international climate and trade talks after the US … Continued
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