China’s Green Dreams Shattered

Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,

China’s green industry faces severe headwinds.

China has been all-in on the “green revolution” for years. Green technology has been a significant revenue source for the communist regime, aided and abetted by Western environmentalists intent on mandating “carbon neutrality” and governments that have incentivized the transition from hydrocarbon-based energy sources to “renewables.”

For China, renewables represent the intersection of green technology development, 15-minute cities, and comprehensive social controls, all of which are tied together by local police bureaus and lubricated by money.

Let us examine the issue.

Chinese Green Investments

The Western push (mania) to transition away from hydrocarbons was perceived by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a golden opportunity to achieve multiple political-economic ends: to weaken the energy infrastructures of Western countries—especially its perceived main enemy, the United States—to create new overseas markets for Chinese industry, to increase Western dependency on Chinese-produced green technology components and the rare earth elements needed to manufacture them, and to achieve a massive trade surplus that would fuel the Chinese military and other investments.

Perhaps most importantly, green technology investments would increase Chinese technological prestige on the world stage in a sector of keen political focus in the West, which dovetails nicely with CCP messaging about the “inevitability” of Chinese communist world leadership.

Thus, it is no surprise that CCP leader Xi Jinping and state-run Chinese media periodically sing the green song that includes pushing “global decarbonization” and China’s “big role” in global green transition. The New York Times even published an op-ed in April last year stating that “Xi thinks China can slow climate change.”

From 2000 to 2010, Chinese green investments were estimated to have been between $50 billion and $100 billion annually. Green priorities were elevated from the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010) onward. The annual green investments made subsequently increased each year to reach $890 billion (!) in 2023, which is “almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply” that year, according to Carbon Brief.

The submission of green technology-related patents is a further indication of the CCP’s prioritization of green tech investments. Chinese companies now submit 75 percent of global clean energy patent applications compared to just 5 percent of the total in 2000, according to a recent report by Ember, an energy think tank.

More specifically, from 2016 to 2020, more than 200,000 green and low-carbon category patents were registered in China—over 36 percent of the world total during the period—according to data cited by China’s Ministry of Commerce.

Also contributing to the growth in China’s “big three” green industries—batteries, electric vehicles, and solar—has been massive foreign direct investment (FDI), including $227 billion in 2023 and $250 billion in 2024, which is “comparable to the inflation-adjusted Marshall Plan,” according to Business Standard.

The overall result is that China’s clean-energy sectors drove a quarter of the country’s GDP growth in 2024, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. China now produces more than 80 percent of the world’s solar panels, over 60 percent of the world’s electric vehicles, and at least 75 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and battery cells.

BYD electric cars for export are seen waiting to be loaded onto a ship at a port in Yantai, in eastern Shandong Province, China, on April 18, 2024. STR/AFP via Getty Images

The conclusion is that China has a lot of eggs in the green basket—and much to lose if green subsidies are ended in the West as science continues to undermine the claims of environmentalists.

Green Meets Red

From 1949 onward, the CCP has pursued a concept called “Controlled Urbanization,” a planning approach that adheres to socialist or communist principles. In this top-down system, a central government or administrative body makes all major decisions regarding urban development, instead of relying on market forces or individual choices.

Since state subsidies make green technology cost-effective, socialist ideology aligns closely with green tech. Transitioning Chinese society into a green future involves monitoring, restricting, and controlling the movements of Chinese citizens. Shanghai’s “15-minute community life circle” concept ensures that all basic living essentials and public services would be made available within a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride (no gasoline-powered automobiles needed!). China’s State Council approved Shanghai’s urban plan in 2017.

The Chinese regime has been tinkering with cameras, scanners, mass surveillance systems, biometrics, big data, and related social control technologies under the guise of implementing the clean and modern pollution/carbon-free future as a showcase for Chinese green technologies—and more, including showing other authoritarians around the world how it’s done. So much for anonymity and the right to privacy in the CCP’s brave new world!

And of course, the local police bureaus are only too happy to use those tools to ensure compliance with CCP diktats on all sorts of things, including energy usage, travel restrictions, mask mandates, and medical service access.

As the world’s leader in green technology production, China’s green tech aligns with Western decarbonization goals. What could go wrong? (Refer to Germany’s green transition problems here.)

Western Monkey Wrenches

Enter the Trump administration, whose recent actions on the green front must have set off alarm bells in Zhongnanhai.

In July, the Climate Working Group of the U.S. Department of Energy published a report titled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” Exhaustive analysis of climate data and projections led to the following key conclusions:

• Carbon dioxide-induced warming may be less economically damaging than previously thought, and aggressive mitigation policies might be more harmful than helpful.

• U.S. policy actions are expected to have very small direct impacts on the global climate, and any effects will only become apparent after long delays.

Perhaps even more important, carbon dioxide only contributes about 4 to 5 percent of the greenhouse effect, whereas water vapor and clouds contribute 95 percent, and only 4 percent of that 4 to 5 percent greenhouse effect can be attributed to human activity, according to a recent Frontiers study.

Lastly, the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 100-plus years has not altered the so-called greenhouse effect of the atmosphere in any measurable way.

In short, the “scientific basis” for the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding that classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant—and laid the foundation for the massive government subsidies for green technology investments—is a myth.

Concluding Thoughts

Over the past 20 years, China has bet the farm on green technology investments that have fueled massive growth in Chinese production and exporting of solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, transformers, and other components. Foreign demand for those products is heavily influenced by government subsidies, particularly in the United States.

The Trump administration has already indicated that the carbon dioxide endangerment finding made by the EPA, which is the basis for all U.S. climate regulations and federal subsidies, will soon be repealed.

Can the Chinese economy sustain the loss of U.S. green subsidies? Reuters noted in August that “China’s biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year.” That could well be a harbinger of future challenges.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.