Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-07-25
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
The question of how China governs its energy transition has emerged as one of the defining policy challenges of the early twenty-first century. As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and simultaneously its largest investor in renewable energy infrastructure, China occupies a structurally paradoxical position in global climate politics. The country's domestic policy choices carry consequences that extend far beyond its borders, shaping the pace of global decarbonization, the competitiveness of green technology markets, and the credibility of multilateral climate commitments. In this context, scholarly attention to the intersection of climate transition, governance architecture, and market design in China is not merely an academic exercise — it is essential for understanding how the global community might realistically achieve its emissions reduction targets. The article under examination, published in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, engages precisely this nexus, offering an analysis of how China's institutional arrangements and political economy shape the trajectory of its climate ambitions.
At the heart of the article's analytical framework lies the recognition that China's climate governance is neither a straightforward command-economy directive nor a market-led process of the kind familiar to liberal political economies. Instead, it operates through a layered and frequently contested governance structure in which central mandates, provincial implementation, and quasi-market instruments interact in ways that produce both innovation and incoherence. China's carbon market, formally launched as a national system in 2021 and now the world's largest by covered emissions, exemplifies this complexity. The system was designed to leverage market price signals to incentivize emissions reductions among large industrial emitters, yet in practice it has been characterized by low carbon prices, limited sectoral coverage, and ongoing reliance on administrative allocation rather than auction-based permit distribution. The article's attention to this gap between institutional design and operational reality reflects a broader scholarly recognition that the political economy of transition in state-capitalist systems cannot be read off from formal policy documents alone.
The governance dimension is equally central to understanding why China's climate transition has proceeded unevenly across sectors and regions. China's political system creates strong incentives for local officials to prioritize economic output and employment, particularly in coal-dependent provinces where energy transition directly threatens fiscal revenues and social stability. The result is a persistent tension between nationally articulated climate commitments — most notably the dual carbon goals of peak emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 — and the local political economy calculations that shape how national policies are actually implemented. This tension is not unique to China; it mirrors dynamics observed in federal systems elsewhere, including India and Brazil, where subnational political actors retain significant leverage over energy investment decisions. What distinguishes the Chinese case is the scale of the challenge and the degree to which the central government has attempted to resolve this tension through a combination of regulatory pressure, financial incentives, and cadre evaluation criteria that increasingly incorporate environmental performance metrics. Whether these instruments are sufficient to overcome entrenched local interests remains a genuinely open empirical question, and one that the article engages with appropriate scholarly caution.
From a comparative political economy perspective, China's approach to climate governance reflects a broader pattern in which developmental states seek to harness market mechanisms as tools of industrial policy rather than as neutral allocative devices. This has important implications for how outside observers — including multilateral development institutions and bilateral ODA partners — should interpret Chinese engagement with global climate finance and green development norms. China has positioned itself as both a recipient and a major provider of climate-related development finance, particularly through the Belt and Road Initiative, which has been subject to significant criticism for financing coal and fossil fuel infrastructure in partner countries. The evolution of Chinese climate policy domestically thus carries direct implications for what kind of development model China exports, and for whether the substantial infrastructure financing it provides to lower-income countries will be compatible with global temperature reduction pathways. For scholars and practitioners working in the ODA and civil society space, this interconnection between domestic governance and external development finance is a critical area for continued analytical attention.
Looking forward, the trajectory of China's climate governance will be shaped by at least three intersecting dynamics that merit close observation. First, the maturation of China's domestic carbon market and the potential expansion of its coverage to sectors including steel, cement, and aviation will test whether market-based instruments can be made to work effectively within a political economy that remains ambivalent about ceding resource allocation to price signals. Second, the intensifying geopolitical competition between China and Western economies in green technology sectors — solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage — introduces new pressures on both the pace of domestic deployment and the terms of international technology cooperation. Third, civil society actors within China, though operating under significant constraints, continue to play a role in environmental governance through legal advocacy, technical expertise provision, and public awareness functions that are distinct from but not entirely separable from state-directed policy processes. For researchers at institutes focused on civil society and development, tracing how these non-state actors navigate China's regulatory environment and contribute to climate governance outcomes represents a valuable and underexplored research agenda. The article's engagement with governance and market dynamics in the Chinese context ultimately reminds us that climate transition everywhere is a deeply political process, and that the institutions, interests, and ideas that shape it deserve sustained and serious scholarly scrutiny.