Revisiting China’s climate policy

Abstract

Against the emergence of multilateral climate governance, China showed a hostile stance, opposing the obligation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. However, China has gradually changed its stance to accept a non-obligatory reduction of carbon intensity and become proactive in this reduction. Meanwhile, it has implemented a number of climate policy measures. Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to explore what changed China’s hostile stance to a proactive one through revisiting the policy process and outcomes the Chinese government has taken to address the climate-energy conundrum. The findings can be summarized as follows. First, China’s climate policy has been centered on energy development strategies, thus is framed as energy policy. However, detailed policy measures have been adjusted in order to make them realistic and effective, incorporating the vested interests of local governments and national oil companies (NOCs), the government’s desire to create new growth points, and emerging health concerns. Second, the resultant climate-energy policy provokes conflicts of interest between provincial governments, NOCs, and distributed energy producers, blocking changes in the energy mix from accelerating and impairing the structural effect for CO₂ emission reductions. Such domestic conflicts of interest are shifting the government focus toward “going global” in coal and hydropower industries.