China has reasons beyond the climate to turn into the world's first electrostate

Australia Broadcast Center

15 hours ago

The superpower is dominating the global clean technology sector. It's not all about climate change.
中文版
In April this year, China installed more solar power than Australia has in all its history. In one month.
This isn't a story about Australia's poor track record on solar either, Australia is a global leader. Rather, this shows the astonishing rate at which China is embracing renewable technologies across every aspect of its society.
But don't be mistaken by thinking this transformation is driven by a moral obligation to act on climate change.
China's reasons for this are less about arresting rising temperatures than its desire to stop relying on imported fossil fuels and to fix the pollution caused by them.
The superpower has put its economic might and willpower behind renewable technologies, and by doing so, is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era and bringing about the age of the electro-state.
"The whole modern industrial economy is built around fossil fuels. Now the whole world is moving away from that and that means that we are rebuilding our economy around emerging clean tech sectors," said Muyi Yang, the lead China analyst at energy thinktank, Ember.
"Once the new direction is set, the momentum will become self-sustaining. It will make reversal impossible. I think China now has set its direction towards a clean energy future.
"Can you imagine that the Chinese government will say that, oh, we will go back to fossil car, not the electric cars? That won't happen. That's not possible … this momentum is becoming so strong."
Maintenance work on wind turbines at a wind farm on East Lvhua Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province. ( Getty Images: VCG )
The beginning of the end of fossil fuels
It's hard to communicate the scale of China's clean technology rollout but it helps to look back to recent history to appreciate the transformation.
China became the world's factory at the end of the 20th century, manufacturing cheap, low-quality products. This industrialisation modernised the country but also caused widespread environmental damage and drastic air pollution.
The factories were powered by fossil fuels, causing China's emissions to skyrocket and it to become the largest polluter in the world.
China overtook the United States for top place in 2006, but the US is still responsible for the most emissions historically, at one-quarter of all emissions.
Still, China's pivot to renewables wasn't just about addressing these rising emissions.
With polluted waterways and acrid city smog long ago becoming their own crises, China had to act. Part of that response, starting a decade ago, was a plan called Made in China 2025, which outlined how it would reshape its manufacturing capability to focus on high-tech products, including the ones needed to address climate change.
The authoritarian regime put the heft of the state behind clean technologies at a scale and pace difficult to imagine in most democracies.
A worker inspects solar panels at a solar farm in Dunhuang, 950km north-west of Lanzhou, in China's Gansu Province. ( Reuters: Carlos Barria )
It began to invest in all components for renewables, especially wind, solar, electric cars, and batteries that are used for both transport and energy storage. To do this, it used significant government-funded subsidies, said Ember's Muyi Yang.
"We all understand that young sectors and technologies need some protection for them to grow. It's like helping a baby to learn how to work, initially, you need to support them.
"But I think the logic behind China's policy support is always clear — this support is not meant to be pumped up indefinitely."
When China rose to industrial dominance in the 1990s, it realised that it could maximise output by developing hubs where all parts of a supply chain for a product are built in the same region. The same approach was applied to renewables, meaning battery factories were established near car plants, as an example.
"It's not about subsidies. It's about sound planning, sustained commitment, and targeted support," Yang said.
As the Made In China plan unfolded, more and more power was needed to fuel these energy-hungry factories and the lifestyles of the burgeoning middle class. To keep up, China built new coal-fired power stations, even as it was installing more wind and solar.
This "dissonance" between China's booming renewables and coal has meant China is painted both as a climate hero and a villain.
It's also meant that emissions kept rising.
More than 60,000 solar photovoltaic panels cover a mountain in Jinhua, in China's Zhejiang province. ( AFP: Yuan Xinyu )
Renewables boom
A decade after the Made in China plan began, the country's clean energy transformation is staggering.
"It's a really interesting policy because it's a 10-year plan to become a world-leading clean tech manufacturer, which they've outright achieved," said Caroline Wang, the China engagement lead at the thinktank Climate Energy Finance. "They've made themselves indispensable in the new kind of global economy."
China is home to half of the world's solar, half of the world's wind power, and half of the world's electric cars.
"In the month of April alone, 45.2GW of solar was added, more than Australia's total cumulative solar power capacity," Caroline Wang said.
"China's renewable capacity has exponentially increased and that has also contributed to the drop in coal, in coal use and emissions. There is now a structural kind of decline of coal."
That's already having an impact on emissions.
Recent analysis from Carbon Brief found the country's emissions dropped in the first quarter of 2025 by 1.6 per cent. China produces 30 per cent of the world's emissions, making this a critical milestone for climate action.
With its unmatched economies of scale, this dramatic acceleration has also brought down the cost of electrification across the world and made China the world leader in clean technologies. Chinese-made electric cars are becoming more dominant on Australian roads — something that's already happened for the solar panels and batteries installed across Australian homes.
"China has successfully helped the rest of the world lower the bar for them to embark on the transition. This makes it easier for many other countries to jump on board," Ember's Muyi Yang said.
"The transition has to be affordable, otherwise it will be extremely difficult for many developing countries."
China's clean energy exports in 2024 alone have already shaved 1 per cent off global emissions outside of China, according to Carbon Brief, and will continue to do so for next 30 years.
Caroline Wang points out that this green era has also brought major economic benefits.
"It drove 10 per cent of their GDP last year, just the one industry, clean energy. It's overtaken real estate, and that says a lot because real estate was the driving force of their economy until a few years ago. But now it's been overtaken by clean energy," she said.
Photovoltaic modules for solar panels in a factory in Suqian, east China's Jiangsu province. ( AFP )
A wind power equipment manufacturing company in Binzhou, in China's Shandong Province. ( AFP/Costfoto/NurPhoto )
The Shichengzi photovoltaic power station in Hami City, north-west China's Xinjiang Uyghur region. ( AFP/Xinhua/Hu Huhu )
Energy security as an electrostate
China's renewables expansion is also striking because it could not be more different to the direction of another world superpower, the United States, under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
Casting aside the climate damage it will wreak, the US is in a position to return to its "drill, baby, drill" roots because the country produces more than enough fossil fuels to cover its own needs.
That's not the case for China. One of the key reasons it has pivoted to electrification is to get away from its dependence on imported fossil fuels.
A giant oil and gas field in Saudi Arabia's Rub' Al-Khali (Empty Quarter) desert, operated by Aramco. ( Reuters: Hamad I Mohammed )
"I think there's some deep strategic thinking … it's not only about the environmental obligation or international commitment, and it can also not be fully explained by economic benefit in terms of jobs and investment," Yang said.
"Energy is a basic input for economic activities. Energy security is critical because it's critical for supporting a functioning economy."
"China sees the old, the conventional fossil fuel growth model as not sustainable. And it is becoming increasingly unable to sustain long-term prosperity."
When the world's economies became hooked on fossil fuels, they became dependent on the countries that could supply them, and the price of fossil fuels increasingly dictated global markets.
"This dates back to issues in the 1970s with the [oil] crisis," said Jorrit Gosens, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU.
"That's really when people start to think about energy security, especially when we talk about China.
"China typically is described as very rich in coal, but very poor in natural gas and oil."
BYD electric cars for export are waiting to be loaded onto a ship at a port in Yantai, in eastern China's Shandong province. ( STR/AFP )
New electric vehicles disembark from a BYD vessel. ( Reuters: Anderson Cohelo )
Electrification is changing that, and China — the world's biggest oil importer — is already weaning itself off with electric cars.
"If you go to Beijing today, you can honestly stand at intersections with four lanes going every way and it'll be quiet as a mouse. The noisiest thing coming past will be a creaky bicycle," Dr Gosens remarked.
Last year, crude oil imports to China fell for the first time in two decades, with the exception of the recent pandemic. China is now expected to hit peak oil in 2027, according to the International Energy Agency.
This is already having an impact on projections for global oil production, as China drove two-thirds of the growth in oil demand in the decade to 2023.
A new energy base in China's Tengger Desert. ( AFP: NurPhoto )
The end of the petrostate?
The 20th century has been dominated by countries rich in fossil fuels, and many of the world's conflicts fought over access, power and exploitation of them.
Done right, electrification could change that too, as most countries will be producing their own electricity.
"Even if you have pretty poor quality natural resources, you can still squeeze quite a bit of electricity out of a solar panel. It's really changing the geopolitics," ANU's Dr Gosens said.
"Renewable energy is the most secure form of energy that there is because you just eliminate the need for import.
"But also the cost of it, right? It's a stable cost. You lock it in as soon as you build it. You know what the price of your electricity is going to be. You get insulated from both those risks if you have more renewable energy."
For Australia, one of the world's largest exporters of coal and gas, there is plenty to take from this, with China's furious electrification paving the way for the rest of the world to follow.
"Even if we have these climate wars here still … we can bicker about how quickly we should transition away from fossil fuels domestically [but] the rest of the world is ultimately going to decide how much they'll be buying of our coal, gas and iron ore," Dr Gosens said.
"I think that's the biggest risk that we fail to prepare for something and that these changes will be much quicker than we currently anticipate."
For Climate Energy Finance's Caroline Wang, it's in Australia's interest to be clear-eyed about what's happening in China.
"I think a gap in Australia and other Western countries is knowledge and understanding. China is a complex country … it's got good and bad. For the energy transition space, which is full of complexity, there's a real need, for our strategic national interests, for Australia to understand what is happening in China."
Finding hope in national self-interest and security might seem strange, but for Wang, China's transformation makes her more optimistic about the climate crisis.
"This is the world's largest emitter, the largest population. If they've managed to do it in quite a short time — a decade — it's a kind of achievement that we haven't seen any other country achieve. And so it's very inspiring. Seeing that on the ground gave me hope for other countries, including Australia … there are lessons there to be learned."
Wind turbines at a wind farm in Suichuan County, in China's central Jiangxi province. ( STR/AFP )
Read the story in Chinese: 阅读中文版
Reporting: Jo Lauder
Design and graphics: Alex Lim
Header photo illustration (clockwise from left): Getty: Kevin Frayer; STR/AFP; Reuters: Florence Lo