The grim pollution reality in China
China has been all-in on the “green revolution” for years. Green technology has been a big money-maker for the communists, aided and abetted by Western environmentalists intent on mandating “carbon neutrality” and governments that have incentivized 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 glued together by local police bureaus and lubricated by money. The results are on display in Brazil this week.
Let us examine the issue.
CHINESE GREEN INVESTMENTS
The Western push (mania) to transition away from hydrocarbons was perceived by the Chinese as a golden opportunity to achieve multiple political-economic ends: to weaken the energy infrastructures of Western countries (especially their Main Enemy, the US), 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 Chinese military and other investments. Perhaps most important, 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 world leadership. Win, win, win for Beijing.
Thus, it is no surprise that communist leader Xi Jinping and state-run Chinese media periodically sing the green song that includes pushing “global decarbonization” [URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202411/25/WS6743c96ca310f1265a1cf4e6.html ] and China’s “big role” in global green transition [URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202409/11/WS66e0f68fa3103711928a7515.html ]. The New York Times even reported back in April that “Xi thinks China can slow climate change.”
From 2000-2010, Chinese green investments were estimated to have been $50-$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 $894 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% of global clean energy patent applications compared to just 5% of the total in 2000. More specifically, from 2016-2020, over 200,000 green and low-carbon category patents were registered in China (over 36% of the world total during the period), according to the Ministry of Finance. [URL: https://chinaipr.mofcom.gov.cn/article/industryreports/202401/1983921.html ]
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 over 80% of the world’s solar panels, over 60% of the world’s electric vehicles, and over 75% of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and battery cells.
The conclusion is that the communists have 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 Chinese communists have pursued a concept called “Controlled Urbanization” as the ideologically driven way-ahead for urban development. As noted here, “[c]ontrolled urbanization is a socialist method of planning in which there is no intervention by market forces in the economic system and where the greater part of production activity is determined top-down from an administrative hierarchical body or central agency.”
Since government subsidies are what makes green technology “cost-effective,” socialist ideology and green tech go together like white on rice. Transitioning Chinese society into the green future involves monitoring, restricting, and controlling the movements of Chinese citizens. The thinking crystallized in 2014 at the seventh session of the World City Forum during which Shanghai proposed the “15-minute community” concept, which would ensure 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 15-minute city pilot project in 2017, and the communists have been tinkering with cameras, scanners, mass surveillance systems, biometrics, big data, and related social controls technologies ever since 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 (e.g., energy usage, travel restrictions, wearing of masks, medical services usage, etc.).
World’s leader in green technology production, Chinese green tech aligned with Western decarbonization goals, the benefits of socialism with Chinese characteristics showcased to the world, social controls second to none, Chinese leadership and prestige on the world stage, Western energy infrastructure undermined (e.g., refer to Germany’s green transition problems here).
What could go wrong?
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 US Department of Energy published a report entitled, “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate.” Exhaustive analysis of climate data and projections led to the following key conclusions:
- CO2-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial.
- U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.
Perhaps even more important, CO2 only contributes about 4-5% of the greenhouse effect, whereas water-vapor and clouds contribute 95%, and only 4% of that 4-5% can be attributed to human activity. Lastly, the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last 100+ 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 CO2 as a pollutant, as well as 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 US.
The Trump administration has already indicated that the CO2 endangerment finding made by the EPA, which is the basis for all US climate regulations and federal subsidies, will soon be repealed.
No wonder the ChiComs are making a big play at the ongoing COP30 boondoggle in Belém, Brazil. There is no official US presence there, but the Chinese presence is enormous. With the Trump administration’s withdrawal from climate diplomacy (a return to sanity!), China has emerged as a dominant force, filling the leadership vacuum as a key broker in climate “negotiations,” a showcase for its green tech dominance, and a vocal advocate for developing nations in pursuit of the Marxian “net zero carbon” nonsense.
Can they fool the rest of the world into continuing to buy their subsidized green junk?
Can the Chinese economy sustain the loss of US green subsidies? Reutersnoted in August that “China’s biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year.” That could well be a welcome harbinger.
The end.