Source: Journal of Contemporary Asia | Published: 2026-08-08
Category: 아시아 정치경제 | Keywords: china, governance, policy, transition
The intersection of climate policy, state governance, and market mechanisms has emerged as one of the most consequential analytical terrains in contemporary political economy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the People's Republic of China, whose carbon emissions remain the largest in the world in absolute terms and whose policy choices reverberate through global climate diplomacy, commodity markets, and development finance. As the international community grapples with the widening gap between nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement and the actual trajectory of planetary warming, understanding how China manages its own energy transition — and the institutional architecture through which it does so — has become indispensable for scholars, policymakers, and civil society actors alike. This article in the Journal of Contemporary Asia arrives at a moment when the internal contradictions of China's climate ambitions are becoming impossible to ignore: the country pledges carbon neutrality by 2060 while simultaneously approving new coal-fired power capacity, extends green finance domestically while funding fossil fuel infrastructure abroad, and rolls out market instruments while maintaining the commanding role of the party-state over strategic economic decisions. These tensions are not incidental — they are constitutive of the Chinese development model itself, and unpacking them requires exactly the kind of interdisciplinary, region-sensitive analysis that the Journal of Contemporary Asia is well positioned to provide.
The conceptual triad of transition, governance, and market that organizes the article signals an analytical framework attentive to both the structural pressures bearing down on China's energy system and the institutional filters through which those pressures are mediated. China's climate transition is not simply a technical problem of substituting renewable capacity for fossil fuel generation. It is a profoundly political process involving the redistribution of rents, the renegotiation of center-periphery relations within China's federal-style administrative structure, and the management of competing interests among state-owned enterprises, local governments, private capital, and the Party's own ideological imperatives. The governance dimension is therefore central rather than peripheral. China's climate institutions have expanded rapidly over the past decade — the establishment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the launch of the national emissions trading scheme in 2021, and the integration of climate targets into the five-year planning cycle all represent meaningful institutional development. Yet as scholars of Chinese governance have consistently noted, institutional proliferation does not automatically translate into effective implementation, particularly when powerful industrial ministries and provincial governments retain the capacity to resist or dilute central mandates. The market dimension adds further complexity: China's carbon market is the largest in the world by covered emissions, yet its price signals have historically been too weak to drive deep decarbonization, and the allocation mechanism has been calibrated to avoid disrupting industrial competitiveness rather than to internalize the full social cost of carbon.
Situating this analysis within the broader landscape of Asian political economy and global development finance reveals important comparative and relational dimensions. China's domestic climate governance does not operate in isolation from its external economic footprint. The Belt and Road Initiative has been the subject of sustained scholarly and civil society critique for its fossil fuel financing, and while Beijing has announced commitments to cease funding overseas coal projects, the implementation of this pledge and the question of what replaces coal in its overseas energy portfolio remain genuinely contested. The Asian Development Bank and multilateral development institutions more broadly have adjusted their own lending portfolios in response to both climate science and donor pressure, creating a competitive landscape in which Chinese development finance must position itself. Meanwhile, economies across Southeast and South Asia that are deeply integrated with Chinese supply chains face their own transition pressures, as carbon border adjustment mechanisms from the European Union begin to reshape the trade calculus for carbon-intensive goods. Understanding China's internal governance of its climate transition is therefore inseparable from understanding the external pressures and obligations that Chinese state actors must navigate simultaneously — a point that underscores the significance of publishing this analysis in a journal whose editorial scope explicitly bridges domestic and international levels of analysis.
The policy implications of scholarship on Chinese climate governance are substantial and extend well beyond the China studies community. For development practitioners and ODA strategists working in partner countries heavily exposed to Chinese economic influence, understanding the trajectory of Chinese climate policy is essential for anticipating shifts in energy financing, infrastructure design standards, and regulatory norms. If China's domestic carbon market matures and its carbon pricing signals strengthen, this may over time create incentives for Chinese firms operating abroad to internalize carbon costs in ways that align more closely with host country and international climate commitments. Conversely, if governance failures and industrial lobbying continue to weaken the market instrument, the decarbonization trajectory implied by China's 2060 neutrality pledge becomes increasingly implausible, with cascading consequences for global temperature outcomes and for the multilateral climate architecture that depends on Chinese cooperation to function. For civil society organizations engaged in climate advocacy, this scholarship provides analytical grounding for engagement strategies that go beyond demanding Chinese compliance with international norms and instead identify the specific institutional leverage points within China's governance system where reform is both possible and consequential. The role of subnational actors, including pilot emission trading regions, green finance experimental zones, and provincial governments with strong renewable resource endowments, deserves particular attention as potential sites of productive engagement.
Looking forward, the analytical questions raised by this article are likely to grow more rather than less pressing as the decade progresses. The period between now and 2030 is widely understood by climate scientists as decisive for keeping warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and China's policy choices in this window will be disproportionately determinative of outcomes. Several developments merit close scholarly attention. First, the evolution of China's carbon market — particularly any shift toward auctioning rather than free allocation of permits, and any expansion of coverage to sectors beyond power generation — will be a crucial indicator of whether the market instrument is being designed for genuine decarbonization or primarily for reputational management. Second, the relationship between climate governance and China's broader economic restructuring agenda, including the push to develop high-value manufacturing in clean energy technology sectors, will shape whether decarbonization is experienced domestically as an opportunity or a constraint by key political-economic actors. Third, the interaction between China's climate diplomacy and South-South cooperation frameworks, including its engagement with the Global South through platforms such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, will determine whether Chinese development finance becomes a vector for accelerating or retarding the clean energy transition in low-income countries that most need concessional support. Researchers at institutions like IOCSS, attentive to the intersections of development finance, civil society, and political economy, are well positioned to contribute to this analytical agenda — not only by examining China as an object of study, but by tracing the ways in which Chinese climate governance choices ripple outward to shape the development landscape in which partner organizations and governments must operate. This article in the Journal of Contemporary Asia is a valuable contribution to that unfolding conversation.