1.1 Discourses of Chinese Green Development

China is now seen in an unfavorable light in much of the developed world. Global polling shows highly negative views of China and Xi Jinping in liberal democratic countries (Silver et al. Reference Silver2022a, Reference Silver2022b). In the US, nearly eight-in-ten Americans have an unfavorable view of China, according to polling (Huang et al. Reference Huang2024, Reference Huang2025). Moreover, 89% of Americans see China as either an “enemy” (33%) or “competitor” (56%) (Huang et al. Reference Huang2025). While views of China are more favorable in middle-income countries, China still trails the US in favorability even in these countries (Silver et al. Reference Silver2023). Negative global perceptions are contributing to material consequences for China as other countries increasingly take trade, security, and other actions.

Polls of Chinese citizen satisfaction with the government suggest more stable public opinion in China’s domestic context, but this has not stopped Chinese officials and state media from attempting to bolster domestic support by highlighting Chinese global successes and promoting narratives of US decline (Carothers & Freedman Reference Carothers and Freedman2025).

Enter Chinese green development. The environment is an area in which China has traditionally been seen as a laggard and poor performer, but where active policy engagement, governance implementation, and manufacturing innovation have begun to reshape impressions of China in ways both dramatic and subtle. The struggle over what China stands for with respect to the environment, or its social construction in the eyes of global and domestic audiences, is a central focus of this Element.Footnote ²

In explaining the concept of constructivism in international relations theory, Alexander Wendt famously noted that “500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons” because “the British are friends and the North Koreans are not” (Wendt Reference Wendt1995, p. 73). In other words, who states are understood to be matters in international relations. Consider instead the contrast between Western and Chinese framings of air pollution in China. Western commentators have commonly attributed China’s air pollution problems to its authoritarian political system, whereas Chinese experts more frequently treat it as a problem of development stage. Alternatively, consider the different responses to Korean or Chinese electric vehicles in the US. The former are seen as unthreatening export products, whereas the latter are associated with security risks, job losses, unfair trade practices, overcapacity, intellectual property theft, and undue political influence. In each of these examples, we can see who is considered a friend and who is not.

The following section delineates the contours of the debate about China and the environment, including critical and positive perspectives as well as the audiences likely to hold these views.Footnote ³ This clarification of discourses will set the stage for our discussion of the history of Chinese global environmentalism and the mechanisms of the Chinese global environmentalism playbook. It will also help to sharpen our sense of the ways in which China is attempting to reshape understandings of the country globally and at home through its pursuit of green development.

1.1.3 Relational Perspectives

China’s reputation is not assessed in a vacuum. There is a relational component as well. That is, Chinese standing is influenced in important ways by how China is seen in relation to its chief rivals, for better or worse.

Western observers may take some comfort in studies showing that China remains less popular than the US in much of the world. Pew polls have shown a more than 50 percentage point difference in favorability ratings of the US and China among those surveyed in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Poland and more than 30–40 percentage points in western European countries, Canada, Australia, India, and Israel (Silver et al. Reference Silver2023). Allan et al. (Reference Allan2018) have argued that “China is unlikely to become the hegemon in the near term” because, unlike the US, it is not backed by an ideology that appeals to elite and mass audiences within major countries. The four critiques of China described previously have all arisen in contexts where China is seen as inferior to Western models of rule (e.g., democratic, rights- and market-oriented) as a matter of values or performance.

I nonetheless argue though that China’s standing may be enhanced in at least three potential ways connected to how China is seen in relation to its competitors.

First, China may simply gain in standing by performing better than its rivals in tackling environmental problems. China’s dominance in clean technology manufacturing and deployment is an example of an area in which China is making gains relative to the US and Europe (see, e.g., Lewis Reference Lewis2012; Gallagher Reference Gallagher2014; Nemet Reference Nemet2019; Nahm Reference Nahm2021).

Second, China may get a boost in standing if its rivals begin to perform worse than expected. The Trump administration’s multiple withdrawals from the Paris Agreement and aggressive attacks on renewable energy and electric vehicles, for example, give China an easy opportunity to present itself as a global climate leader, despite extensive criticisms of China’s absolute level of emissions, continued domestic expansion of coal-fired power plants, and shifting of emissions abroad.

Third, China may be viewed in a more positive light if its actions are seen as “no worse than” what the US and other rival countries have done. It matters, for example, that the US, European countries, and Japan all experienced similarly dire bouts of pollution and environmental degradation during the most intense periods of industrialization. Chinese green development may be seen as a more viable alternative to dominant Western notions of sustainable development despite its imperfections if sustainable development is also seen as fraught with contradictions or problems. It makes a difference if Chinese companies are performing no worse than developed country multinational corporations on environmental impacts in global investments.

Alternatively, China will arguably need to do more to enhance its global standing if its chief rivals are performing well on the environment or achieving results in ways that the relevant audiences find preferable.

* * * * *

The various perspectives discussed earlier are summarized in Table 1. Relational perspectives can temper or strengthen the effect of any of these other discourses on Chinese standing. China’s efforts to promote green development play out against this backdrop.

Table 1Discourses of China and the environment

Table 1Long description

Four negative discourses are listed: weak policy formulation & implementation; bad authoritarian environmentalism; economic & security risks; and hegemonic displacement risk. Three positive discourses are listed: developmental perspectives; good authoritarian environmentalism; and pragmatic perspectives. Relational perspectives is listed as a discourse that could be either negative or positive towards China.

We next turn to a brief history of domestic developments that presage Chinese global environmentalism. The picture that emerges differs from both official Chinese narratives and the more critical takes on Chinese environmental governance. Rather, what we find is a fragmented and imperfect process that has nonetheless moved incrementally over time toward the achievement of some environmental policy goals while falling short on others. This history sets the stage for a discussion of the emerging ideology of Chinese global environmentalism.

2.1 China’s Long March toward Green Development

State legitimacy and the natural environment have long been connected in Chinese governance philosophy since as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045–771 bce). Natural disasters, like floods, droughts, and earthquakes, were seen as signs that the Heavens were dissatisfied with a ruler and that the ruler was losing the “Mandate of Heaven” (Zhao Reference Zhao2009). Environmental problems thus were associated with dynastic collapse and could bolster the position of those seeking to rebel against existing rulers. The collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907 ce has been attributed to prolonged drought, a cooling climate, and a weakened monsoon that harmed agricultural output and produced widespread famine (Gao et al. Reference Gao2021). The Ming Dynasty’s end in 1644 ce has been tied to a Little Ice Age, several periods of severe drought, locust plagues, flooding, and volcanic activity that likewise caused famine, infrastructure destruction, and social unrest (Zhang Reference Zhang2010). Given this history, the connection between environmental problems and regime stability cannot be far from the minds of present-day Chinese rulers.

Nonetheless, under the CCP, China paid little attention to environmental protection prior to the commencement of Deng Xiaoping’s Reform Era in 1978 (Smil Reference Smil1984; Shapiro Reference Shapiro2001). This was a period of resource-intensive growth driven by Mao-era policy and “output-oriented state planners and production ministries” (Ross Reference Ross1992, p. 628). Internationally, China participated in the 1972 Stockholm conference, but its interventions at the time were combative and ideological. The head of the Chinese delegation blamed environmental problems on capitalism and US imperialism and focused his public remarks on criticizing US involvement in the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, Chinese preparations for the Stockholm meeting led to the creation of the first Chinese environmental institutions. China’s State Council convened a first National Conference on Environmental Protection in 1973 and established a Leading Group on Environmental Protection in 1974 (Xie Reference Xie2020). But consumed by political turmoil and with a per capita gross national product of only US$75, the environment was simply not a priority during this period (Cai & Voigts Reference Cai and Voigts1994).

When the country emerged from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, China was a broken and impoverished nation and environmental matters were hardly top of mind. In December 1978, the decision of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP marked the commencement of China’s post-Mao Reform Era. This was a period of dramatic economic reform and growth averaging more than 10% per annum. Rapid economic expansion brought with it increasingly severe environmental problems. Perhaps surprisingly, construction of an environmental regulatory regime commenced at the very start of this period. Contemporaneous accounts attribute this to elite awareness of the social costs of pollution and ecological damage (Ross Reference Ross1992). This environmental regulatory activity could also be seen as part of the broader effort at the time to rebuild a legal system and bureaucracy that had been decimated during the Cultural Revolution.

In 1979, the National People’s Congress passed a framework Environmental Protection Law. Over the next two decades China would pass environmental laws on marine environmental protection (1983), forestry (1984), water pollution (1984), air pollution (1987), water resources (1988), and water and soil conservation (1991), solid waste (1995), and noise pollution (1997), among others. Nonetheless, these legal authorities tended to be weak with vague and hortatory provisions, and environmental authorities were subordinate players within the bureaucracy with limited power (Alford & Shen Reference Alford and Shen1997).

At the national level, China’s lead environmental institution progressively gained bureaucratic status in successive governance reforms but continued to be subordinate to powerful development-oriented actors within the system, such as the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and production-oriented ministries. At the local level, environmental protection bureaus faced fundamental limits on their enforcement powers. They reported to development-oriented local governments that controlled their budgets and staffing (Jahiel Reference Jahiel1998; Ma & Ortolano Reference Ma and Ortolano2000). This structural dynamic contributed to persistent local protectionism and weak environmental enforcement within China.

During this period, China made certain advances in environmental protection. The legal, policy, and institutional foundations established during this period would pave the way for later reforms. Indeed, one contemporaneous account called post-Mao environmental reforms “an extraordinary turnaround, dispensing with revolutionary rhetoric in favor of a more pragmatic approach to contemporary problems” (Ross & Silk Reference Ross and Silk1987). Moreover, rapid expansions of light industry and a shift toward greater market orientation led to efficiency increases and reductions in pollution intensity. But China’s evolving environmental regulatory regime could hardly keep up with the pace of rising environmental degradation. Although Li Peng declared environmental protection to be a basic state policy in 1983 and senior leaders repeatedly stated that environmental protection should proceed in tandem with economic development, in practice environmental priorities would continue to take a backseat to economic objectives.

The economic focus was hardly surprising, given China’s relative poverty and the importance of rapid development to the Party’s hold on power. Chinese leaders saw economic development as a key to stability in the wake of Tiananmen Square crackdown and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Underpowered environmental laws and weak environmental regulatory agencies were arguably a feature of the system at this time, rather than a bug. Environmental protection had its supporters at the elite levels, but rapid economic development remained the overwhelming priority.

Internationally, China was active in environmental diplomacy during the first two decades of the Reform Era. Between 1978 and 2000, China acceded to some thirty-one international environmental agreements (Cai & Voigts Reference Cai and Voigts1994, pp. S-24; Ross Reference Ross1998, p. 815). Its early environmental diplomacy was part of an overall effort across issue areas to rejoin the international community and to limit Taiwan’s participation in these spaces. China’s environmental diplomacy in the early years was in significant part also aimed at fending off limits on development, blocking potential threats to state sovereignty, and obtaining funds and capacity-building assistance for domestic environmental work.

Although China’s historical contribution to global environmental problems at the beginning of the Reform Era was limited in comparison to that of the US or European economies, rapid economic growth brought about substantial increases in Chinese emissions of ozone-depleting substances, GHGs, and other pollutants. China’s expanding global environmental impacts brought with it greater international scrutiny and Chinese concern about the potential for international restrictions (Economy Reference Economy1998, p. 270). This led to a push, commencing in the late 1980s, to develop Chinese “environmental diplomacy” (huanjing waijiao) and to train a cadre of environmental specialists to take part in international meetings and to represent Chinese interests (Ross Reference Ross1998).

In 1990, a cross-agency process led to the creation of a set of negotiating principles for Chinese environmental diplomacy. These were, perhaps unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly developmental, although some voices within the system hoped to emphasize China’s responsibilities to the international community and the potential for environmental problems to harm China itself. Among the participants in these debates, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Planning Commission pushed for developmental positions, whereas the National Environmental Protection Administration (NEPA) and the powerful State Science and Technology Commission (SSTC) supported more environmental positions (Economy Reference Economy1998, pp. 270–272).

China publicly aired its support for these principles at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio. Premier Li Peng’s speech at Rio emphasized development and sovereignty. China offered full-throated support for the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR), which emphasized the role of developed countries in causing global environmental problems and their responsibility to move first and to offer support for global action. The concept of CBDR would also appear in the UNFCCC and in substance in the Convention on Biological Diversity. The principle was reflected notably in the bifurcated structure of the Kyoto Protocol, under which developed countries had binding emissions targets and developing countries, like China and India, did not.

Although China’s most pro-environmental actors did not succeed in setting a more environmental agenda for the country at the diplomatic bargaining table, they were highly successful in obtaining funding, technology, and capacity building through environmental diplomacy and international cooperation in this period. These efforts were led by legendary environmental figures like Qu Geping – head of NEPA (1987–1993); Song Jian – head of the SSTC; and Xie Zhenhua – head of China’s environmental agency from 1998 to 2005 and later China’s lead climate negotiator (Economy Reference Economy1998).

An early success came from the 1990 negotiations of the London Amendments to the Montreal Protocol, where China successfully pushed for the creation of a multilateral fund (MLF), with China and India receiving substantial amounts through the fund. During this period, China received billions of dollars (USD) in funding from international institutions, including the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations Development Program and bilateral sources (Economy Reference Economy1998). China received 80% of its environmental budget from foreign sources at one point (Economy Reference Economy1998).

By the turn of the millennium, Chinese environmental protection had made some progress but was still stymied by low political priority relative to the economy, weak laws and institutions, bureaucratic fragmentation, insufficient funding, and limited public participation.

2.2 Initial Moves to Green Development

As China joined the WTO in 2001, it was a country that had experienced unprecedented economic growth over two decades. But this growth also produced extraordinary environmental problems in air, water, soil, and ocean pollution; land degradation, deforestation, and erosion; and biodiversity loss (Liu & Diamond Reference Liu and Diamond2005). Environmental devastation generated high levels of economic losses, such as from water shortages, sandstorm damage, agricultural damage from acid rain, and the cost of combatting harmful invasive species. Recognition of the health costs of pollution was growing. An influential 1997 World Bank study examined health, ecosystem, and agricultural costs of air and water pollution, and estimated that environmental costs were 8% of GDP (Johnson et al. Reference Johnson1997, p. 23). Another study put losses from pollution and ecological damage at 7–20% of GDP (Liu & Diamond Reference Liu and Diamond2005). Social conflicts due to environmental problems in the form of protests, disputes, lawsuits and the like were on the rise.

In 2001, Chinese leaders introduced, at the highest levels of the system, the idea that environmental concerns could be a potential limit on economic development. In remarks announcing China’s 10th five-year plan, Premier Zhu Rongji commented that resource limits (fresh water, farmland, energy, and strategically important minerals) and environmental degradation would limit China’s ability to continue in the “crude manner of growth” that the country had embraced in prior decades. These statements are consistent with Jiang Zemin’s remarks a few years earlier at the 1996 fourth National Environmental Protection Conference, which marked the first time a top leader had noted that environmental protection “could not be subordinated without affecting long-term development” (Ross Reference Ross1998). Senior environmental officials like Qu Geping had much earlier called for greater constraints on development in the name of environmental protection, but the idea had now been taken up by China’s most senior leadership.

Entry into the WTO would slingshot China’s economy to further growth, increasing demand for energy and resources and placing ever greater pressure on the environment. China’s economy would grow by more than ten times, and Chinese exports would expand by more than five times in the next fifteen years. During the 10th five-year plan (2001–05), in addition to worsening pollution, China suffered from nationwide power shortages, and, between 2002 and 2005, economy-wide energy intensity (the amount of energy expended to produce a given unit of GDP) increased for the first time since the early 1980s. These developments exacerbated leadership concerns about energy security and ecological limits on development and spurred greater interest in energy efficiency and pollution reduction programs.

During the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao administration from 2002 to 2012, officials considered environmental policy under broader Hu-era political framings that emphasized “scientific development” (kexue fazhan) and “people at the center” (yiren weiben). As a concept, “scientific development” was meant to convey the need for higher-quality, efficient growth, a contrast to the “development at all costs” approach that had been the norm. In the eyes of many within the system, a December 2005 State Council Decision on Implementing Scientific Development and Strengthening Environmental Protection (the “Decision”) marked a turning point in the priority of environmental protection as a Party-state political priority (PRC State Council 2005). The document was frank in its assessment of China’s environmental problems. The official characterization of China’s environmental crisis now acknowledged “huge economic losses, threats to public health, social stability and environmental safety” as potential consequences.

The Decision explained the motivations for Chinese environmental policy:

Released just three months after the Decision, China’s 11th five-year plan (2006–11) reflected an “environmentalist worldview,” and marked “the first time that the national government has been so strongly committed to the environment” (Naughton Reference Naughton2005). The 11th five-year plan contained for the first time binding environmental and energy targets, instead of non-mandatory guidance targets. These “energy saving, pollution reduction” targets (jieneng jianpai mubiao) were designed to promote greater economy-wide energy efficiency and reductions in air and water pollution. In my field research, local officials in multiple cities described this as a turning point on the environment. They openly admitted to ignoring the pollution targets in the first year of the five-year plan (because such targets had never previously been important), but also reported that the central government made concerted efforts over the next few years to signal to local officials that these targets were now to be taken more seriously (Wang Reference Wang2013).

A panoply of policies and laws emerged during this period to implement the targets. In 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) launched the “Top 1,000” enterprises program to improve energy efficiency at the country’s largest companies. The NDRC also announced a ban on inefficient “backward production capacity” (luohou channeng) in the most energy-intensive industries, including steel, cement, and non-ferrous metals. China’s legislature passed the 2005 Renewable Energy Law, which would lay the groundwork for the subsequent development of Chinese solar, wind, battery, and other clean energy industries.

This was also a period of public ferment over environmental issues, with increased public awareness, burgeoning public protest, an invigorated civil society and growing global attention to China’s environmental woes. On the ground, observers noted that the Decision and the 11th five-year plan emerged amidst ferocious sandstorms in Beijing that dumped some 300,000 tons of sand on the capital (Xinhua 2006). Large-scale environmental accidents, like the 2005 Songhua River benzene spill, occurred with regularity. Environmental protests increased by 29% per year between 1996 and 2011 (Kennedy Reference Kennedy2012).

Environmental civil society groups experienced a golden age not seen before or since. China’s earliest environmental groups, such as Friends of Nature, Wang Yongchen’s Green Earth Volunteers, and Liao Xiaoyi’s Global Village of Beijing, pushed for conservation of charismatic megafauna and wild places. Others like former reporter and activist Ma Jun and lawyer Wang Canfa brought attention to pollution with Ma’s book China’s Water Crisis and Wang’s law school-based legal organization, the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims (CLAPV). Smaller regional or local NGOs like Yun Jianli’s Green Hanjiang, Huo Daishan’s Huai River Defenders, Yu Xiaogang’s Green Watershed, and Wu Dengming’s Green Volunteer League of Chongqing acted as local monitors of pollution.

Chinese officials experimented with public participation and transparency mechanisms during this period. Laws like the Administrative Licensing Law set forth procedural rights to participation in administrative hearings. China’s State Council passed a regulation on open government information in 2007, with China’s environmental agency the first to create implementing measures.

Despite this progress, a yawning gap remained between “laws on the books” and “law in practice.” Local protectionism of industry remained a persistent problem. Local firms and protective government officials colluded on data falsification and looked the other way at illegal dumping. Environmental lawsuits encountered unsympathetic local judges. The 11th five-year plan ended chaotically. Officials reported that environmental and energy targets had largely been met. At the same time, the head of NDRC issued a public apology about widespread cheating among localities struggling to meet their goals (Wang Reference Wang2013, pp. 421–422, 431). Some officials shut down power to hospitals and stop lights to conserve energy. Firms used highly polluting, off-grid diesel generators to obtain power without registering the energy use in official statistics. China’s turn toward the environment had begun, but its initial implementation was fraught.

2.3 The Rise of Ecological Civilization

As the 11th five-year plan concluded and the Hu-Wen administration prepared to step down, it was not at all clear that China would continue to build on its fledgling environmental and climate reforms. Yet, as Xi Jinping ascended to power, China broadened its domestic environmental reforms and took aggressive steps to deepen the ideological and institutional foundations of these reforms under the rubric of ecological civilization. This included expansion of binding environmental and energy targets, a proliferation of new environmental and energy laws and policies, and institutional reforms aimed at centralization of regulatory authority and tightening of enforcement and implementation. These moves suggested that China’s environmental measures were more than merely symbolic. Observers have argued that these reforms were motivated by a complex mix of factors, including concerns about continued economic development and energy security, popular demand for reduced pollution, technocratic response to potential impacts of climate change on China, international normative pressures, and a strategic interest in getting ahead of shifts in energy structure and technology demanded by global climate agreements (see, e.g., Boyd Reference Boyd2012; Wang Reference Wang2018b).

The concept of ecological civilization was elevated domestically through leadership speeches; incorporation into party doctrine, policy, and law; and campaign-style promotion. The concept was folded into core Chinese Communist Party ideology in 2012 with the announcement of the CCP’s so-called “five-in-one” development ideology (wuwei yiti). This placed the environment on par with economic, political, cultural, and social construction as core CCP objectives. The concept of eco-civilization was added to the CCP Constitution in 2012 and the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2018. Moreover, the idea of ecological civilization was linked to overarching CCP centenary goals of achieving a moderately prosperous society (xiaokang shehui) and solving extreme poverty by 2021 (the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP) and building “a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” by 2049 (the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)), with an interim goal to “basically realize socialist modernization” and a “Beautiful China” by 2035. In 2023, China’s National People’s Congress designated August 15 as National Ecology Day. Each of these moves signaled an increase in the political priority of environmental governance.

Targets. China continued to elaborate on its system of environmental targets after 2011. The 12th five-year plan (2011–15) contained binding carbon intensity targets for the first time. Environmental and energy targets made up half of all mandatory targets in the 13th five-year plan (2016–20). In 2020, Xi Jinping announced China’s “dual carbon” (shuangtan) targets at the UN General Assembly – goals to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Implementation Measures. The party and government enacted a host of laws, policies, and enforcement campaigns to promote the achievement of these targets. The national legislature amended the Environmental Protection Law and laws on air pollution, water pollution, solid waste pollution, and marine environmental protection. It passed a new law on soil pollution in 2018. The government launched a much publicized “war on pollution” campaign between 2013 and 2016 to implement pollution action plans for air, water, and soil pollution. The CCP designated pollution control as one of three key governance “battles” (gongjianzhan) in 2017, along with the battle to reduce major risks (huajie zhongda fengxian) and the battle to alleviate poverty (tuopin). China would combine bureaucratic targets and tournament-style competition among officials and jurisdictions, campaign-style enforcement, and a blend of legal, economic, and policy carrots and sticks to drive environmental action.

Institutional Reforms. A range of institutional reforms sought to improve governance and signal the increased priority of environmental protection. Several existing agencies were combined to create the Ministry of Environment & Ecology (MEE) as a “superministry” capable of reducing problems of horizontal fragmentation. Bureaucratic reforms aimed to centralize environmental enforcement through central inspection teams, provincial management of environmental monitoring and inspections, and Party-state joint responsibility. Other measures sought to mobilize the bureaucracy to join in environmental governance through high-level leading groups and the recruiting of banking, securities, and other regulators to enforce environmental rules. Yet others increased public supervision through environmental information disclosure and public interest litigation (Wang Reference Wang2018a, Reference Wang2018b).

2.4 Ecological Civilization as Ideology

The maturation of domestic environmental policies, programs and institutional capacity has contributed to the emergence of an ideology of Chinese global environmentalism that China has begun to deploy globally. This is a top-down, state-led developmental version of environmentalism that is beginning to put pressure on global environmental norms forged in the US and Europe.

Just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping levied a not-so-subtle criticism of the US in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “As the Chinese saying goes, people with petty shrewdness attend to trivial matters, while people with vision attend to governance of institutions.” Moments later, he added: “We should honor promises and abide by rules … The Paris Agreement is a hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development. All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations” (Xi Reference Xi2017).

The remark was a reference to Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, and Xi’s point could not have been clearer. China was a responsible nation and a leader on environmental matters. The US was not. Western and Chinese media amplified the message, never mind China’s staggering level of GHG emissions or its continued buildout of coal-fired power plants. This marked an intensification of what former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has called the “new geopolitics of China’s climate leadership” (Rudd Reference Rudd2020).

The official doctrine of Chinese environmentalism has been elaborated predominantly for China’s domestic context. A 2022 People’s Daily article, for example, spelled out the content of “Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization” in some detail.Footnote ⁴ A few things stand out. This is a vision that first and foremost is led by the CCP (rather than the people or private sector). It speaks in civilizational terms; that is, civilizations flourish when ecology flourishes and civilizations have fallen when nature falters. The goal is harmonious coexistence of man and nature, although the exact definition of this remains unclear. This connects Xi Jinping Thought directly to early Chinese notions of “harmony between man and nature” (tianren heyi), “the Way (Tao) follows nature,” (daofa ziran), and “take things in moderation” (quzhi youdu). The environment is a source of economic prosperity. Eco-civilization has a notion of collective justice because a healthy environment contributes to the welfare of all people. Xi Jinping Thought expressly recognizes eco-civilization as a “profound revolution in development concept” and a radical move away from earlier, coarser concepts of development. It includes a specific call for “coordinated management of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands, and sand systems,” which has manifested itself within China in the so-called “ecological redline” (shengtai hongxian) program – a massive nationwide zoning project. It calls for “systems,” “rule of law,” and individual action from Chinese citizens to help implement eco-civilization.

Western scholars have begun to theorize ecological civilization in the Chinese domestic context. For example, Hansen et al. (Reference Hansen2018) write that “[e]co-civilization is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary … constructed as a … Communist Party led utopia in which market economy and consumption continue to grow, and where technology and science have solved the basic problems of pollution and environmental degradation.” Yeh (Reference Yeh2022) writes that “[a]s an ideological framework, ecological civilization draws selectively on reductionist interpretations of China’s traditional philosophies while maintaining a long-standing focus on economic growth and on the need for scientific and technological solutions to ecological crises … ” Rodenbiker (Reference Rodenbiker2023a) states that “the Chinese state wields ecology to shape nature, society, and space.” Goron (Reference Goron2018) and Geall & Ely (Reference Geall and Ely2018) have made interventions in a similar vein.

On the global stage, the ideology of eco-civilization is arguably even more abstract and inchoate. Quotes attributed to Xi – such as “ecological civilization is the historical trend of the development of human civilization” or “building a green home is the common dream of mankind” – are typical. In 2023, China’s State Council released a white paper entitled China’s Green Development in the New Era, which discussed China’s domestic green development program at length but offered only modest guidance on China’s global green objectives. These included “participating in global climate governance,” “building a green Belt and Road,” and “carrying out extensive bilateral and multilateral cooperation.”

From Chinese statements and actions in these spaces, we can nonetheless divine a few broad themes.

First and foremost, Chinese global environmentalism is a developmental concept. It was initially concerned with environmental limits on development and then evolved into an idea of green development as a vehicle for “higher quality growth.” The “core idea” of Chinese ecological civilization is Xi’s “two mountains theory.” While the concept has some historical resonance within China, its international translation – green is gold – comes across as purely developmental. That is, the environment is a source of prosperity. One high-profile platform for the slogan was a UN Environmental Program (UNEP) report by Chinese authors entitled “Green is Gold: The Strategy and Actions of China’s Ecological Civilization” in which ecological civilization is presented as a Chinese contribution to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNEP 2016).

Chinese leaders have incorporated this green rhetoric into Xi-era foreign policy language. Thus, Xi has promised to “make green a defining feature of Belt and Road cooperation” (China’s key Xi-era outbound investment strategy) with “cooperation on green infrastructure, green energy and green finance.” Green framings mesh seamlessly with China’s general foreign policy language about promoting a “community of shared destiny” and providing the world with “shared benefits” and “global public goods.” These core concepts are qualified with reference to a hodge-podge of values such as “extensive consultation,” “joint contribution,” “policy coordination,” “infrastructure connectivity,” “unimpeded trade,” “connectivity,” “financial integration,” and “people-to-people bonds.” This is a gauzy invocation of green values as a way to pursue a broader panoply of positive Chinese virtues.

Beyond this, China continues to position itself as a defender of Global South interests and to characterize the country as “the largest developing country in the world” (PRC SCIO 2021a). This includes continued invocation of the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. These emphasize sovereignty and the right of developing countries to take more time in meeting global environmental goals while also obtaining help from developed nations. These arguments also draw strength from postcolonial discourses that see aspects of Western environmentalism as hypocritical or self-interested (i.e., that Western nations are asking the Global South to “do as we say, not as we do”). Chinese official rhetoric has also begun to emphasize the “civilizational” aspects of Chinese governance through programs like the Global Civilization Initiative, launched in 2023. The ostensible purpose of the initiative is to emphasize the importance of diversity of civilizations and discourses and to suggest that the Western “rules based international order” is only one acceptable approach among others (Xi Reference Xi2023).

Underlying all of this is the notion that the steadying Leviathan of Chinese state power at the helm of a broader Chinese civilization is essential to achieving the utopian, win-win visions of Chinese global environmentalism.

These ideational aspects of Chinese global environmentalism are spelled out in an ever-growing body of policy and guidance documents (Coenen, et al. Reference Coenen, Bager, Meyfroidt, New and Challies2020; Hale, et al. Reference Hale2020; Gallagher & Qi Reference Gallagher and Qi2021). China’s strategic aims for its outbound green activities appeared for the first time in the April 2017 document “Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road,” issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), NDRC, and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), to promote “the ecological civilization philosophy” and to build a “community with a shared future for mankind.” Key normative documents concerning China’s global environmental governance are listed in Table 2.

Table 2Chinese green development policies^†

† Entity Abbreviations: Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM); Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP, 2008–2018); Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA); National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC); Green Finance Committee (GFC) of China Society for Banking and Finance; People’s Bank of China (PBOC); China Banking & Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC); China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC); and Ministry of Ecology & Environment (MEE, 2018–present).

‡ In addition to the Green Finance Committee (GFC) of China Society for Banking and Finance and the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (FECO) of MEP, involved entities include the Investment Association of China, China Banking Association, and others.

Table 2Long description

Ten policy documents, dated from 2013 to 2022, are listed in chronological order by issuance date. The three columns list: date, document title (in English and Chinese), and issuing entities. What follows is listed information for each document. Entity name acronyms are explained in a footnote that will be described at the end of this long description.

• In 2013, M O F C O M and M E P issued the Guidelines on Environmental Protection for Overseas Investment and Cooperation《对外投资合作环境保护指南》.

• In 2014, M O F C O M issued the Measures for the Administration of Foreign Aid (trial)《对外援助管理法(试行) 》.

• In 2015, the C P C Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on the C P C Central Committee and the State Council on Further Promoting the Development of Ecological Civilization 《中共中央国务院关于加快推进生态文明建设的意见》.

• In 2017, M E P, M F A, N D R C, and M O F C O M issued the Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road 《关于推进绿色“一带一路”建设的指导意见》.

• In 2017, M E P issued the The Belt and Road Ecological and Environmental Cooperation Plan《“一带一路”生态环境保护合作规划》.

• In 2017, G F C, M E P, and others issued the Environmental Risk Management Initiative for China’s Overseas Investment《中国对外投资环境风险管理倡议》.

• In 2020, M E E, N D R C, P B O C, C B I R C, and C S R C issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting Investment and Financing to Address Climate Change《关于促进应对气候变化投融资的指导意见》.

• In 2021, M E E and M O F C O M issued the Green Development Guidelines for Foreign Investment and Cooperation《对外投资合作绿色发展工作指引》.

• In 2022, M E E and M O F CO M issued the Guidelines for Ecological Environmental Protection of Foreign Investment Cooperation and Construction Projects《对外投资合作建设项⽬⽣态环境保护指南》.

• In 2022, N D R C, M O F C O M, M F A, and M E E issued the Opinions on Promoting Green Development of One Belt One Road《推进共建“⼀带⼀路”绿⾊发展的意⻅》.

The first footnote lists entity abbreviations: M O F COM is the Ministry of Commerce; M E P is the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which existed from 2008 to 2018; M F A is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; N D R C is the National Development and Reform Commission; G F C is the Green Finance Committee of China Society for Banking and Finance; P B O C is the People’s Bank of China; C B I R C is the China Banking & Insurance Regulatory Commission; C S R C is the China Securities Regulatory Commission; and M E E is the Ministry of Ecology & Environment, which was created in 2018 and still exists as of this writing.

The second footnote notes that the “others” reference for the Environmental Risk Management Initiative for China’s Overseas Investment includes the Investment Association of China, China Banking Association, and others. It also clarifies that the reference to M E P is to the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (F E C O) of M E P.

The Xi era has also been marked by a growing proliferation of foreign language materials designed to convey Chinese ideas on global environmentalism to international audiences. These ideas are now regularly advanced through leadership speeches at the highest levels, official foreign policy statements, state-run media, and other publications. The four-volume set of Xi Jinping’s speeches, The Governance of China, published between 2013 and 2022, contains more than two dozen speeches on global and domestic environmental matters. The China Pavilion at annual UNFCCC climate negotiations is replete with books such as Xie Zhenhua’s China’s Road of Green Development, and Zhou Dadi’s Toward a Green and Low-Carbon Future: China’s Energy Strategy. The magnum opus of Chinese outbound messaging may be a 775-page English-language edited volume featuring essays from more than 70 leading Chinese scholars and researchers, entitled Beautiful China: 70 Years Since 1949 and 70 People’s Views on Eco-civilization Construction.

Overall, the gist of the message is that China’s approach to governance and its pursuit of its own self-interest will benefit the rest of the world in developmental and environmental terms. The most powerful idea here remains the notion that Chinese governance can deliver outcomes that other systems cannot. The subtext is that a Chinese-style approach to governance – with top-down, technocratic party-state leadership, marketization within bounds, and emphasis of economic over civil rights, among other things – is better suited to deliver these results. While some commentators have argued that China is in a more ideological age with the ascent of Xi Jinping, the global message here is a pragmatic one as old as politics itself – come with me and I will give you the things that you desire.

A central question is what practical role green ideology plays in Chinese global activity. Does it do any real work or is it mere rhetoric? What is clear is that this is a massive effort to transform Chinese thinking about what constitutes “development” and the proper relationship of man and nature. Less resource intensive or polluting forms of growth are now prized in a way that they were not just a few decades ago. Whereas clean technologies are being presented as a “green scam” at the outset of the second Trump administration in the US (US White House 2025), they are seen as desirable “higher quality” development in China (Qiu Reference Qiu2024; People’s Daily 2025). The Chinese ideology also neatly creates a framework for China to take advantage of political economy dynamics that play in the country’s favor. Thus, China is seeking to escape the middle-income trap by aggressively cultivating advanced clean technology industries. This strategy helps to mitigate energy security risks, reduce strains on the environment and public health, and bolster China’s global reputation through contributions to global development and environmental goals. Most of all, it is a strategy for China to capture the benefits of what it sees as an inevitable global transition to clean energy technologies (Boyd Reference Boyd2012).

Yet many questions remain as to what these general principles mean for action on the ground. How will contradictions between man and nature, development and the environment, or China and the rest of the world be resolved in practice? The doctrine of eco-civilization is beginning to have real bite domestically where it is altering China’s economic structure, industrial behavior, and land use patterns. However, there is no guarantee that this will continue, say, if the economy falters or leadership changes. Even if ideology translates into praxis domestically, it is likely to play out differently abroad. Might Chinese green ideology, for example, demand greater ecological protection at home, while tolerating greater environmental impacts globally in the name of development or simply due to weaker global governance capacity or concern?

These are the ideational aspects of Chinese global environmentalism and the questions they raise. Our brief survey here of the ideology of Chinese global environmentalism shows at minimum how China would like the world to understand the country’s push for global green development. Sections 3–5 examine how the other aspects of the Chinese global environmentalism playbook are emerging in practice. We turn first to China’s use of green diplomacy.

3.1 The Montreal Protocol

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) and its subsequent amendments implement the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) by regulating ozone-depleting substances (ODS).Footnote ⁵ The first major class of ODS regulated was chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), substances widely used in refrigeration, air conditioning, foam-blowing agents, and aerosol propellants. In the 1970s, scientists discovered that CFCs destroyed atmospheric ozone, which acted as a natural barrier to harmful UV solar radiation. Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) were an important initial transitional substitute for CFCs that have subsequently been replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Although HFCs have minimal impact on the ozone layer, they are potent GHGs. The 2016 Kigali Amendment regulates the phasedown of HFCs. Additionally, HFC-22 is a potent GHG that is the byproduct of the manufacturing process for HCFC-22, a common refrigerant.

3.2 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

We now move from the narrower terrain of the Montreal Protocol to the vast expanse of climate change governance. In the area of climate change diplomacy, we see most clearly how China has moved from a defensive crouch toward the affirmative use of environmentalism to promote its strategic aims of building economic strength, improving foreign relations, and bolstering its reputation at home and abroad. In the Xi era, China has increasingly emphasized green development and ecological civilization as core aspects of its arrival on the global stage; and the strategic aspects of this effort can be clearly seen in Chinese climate diplomacy.

The 1992 UNFCCC established a global framework to “achieve … stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (UNFCCC, Art. 2). While the UNFCCC urges a “precautionary” approach under which a “lack of full scientific uncertainty” should not be used as a reason for postponing climate change measures, the treaty also evinces a deep concern with avoiding limits on economic development and supporting the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” that puts the onus on developed countries to “take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof” (UNFCCC, Art. 3). Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, developed countries were subject to binding emission reduction targets and more stringent reporting requirements, while China and some 128 other developing countries were not.

In the early 2000s, China benefitted from the absence of emissions reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol and was the largest beneficiary of funds transfers from developed countries under the Clean Development Mechanism. But China faced increasing pressure to reduce its GHG emissions, particularly after it surpassed the US in 2006 to become the world’s largest emitter. Domestically, Chinese leaders were beginning to take the risks of climate change more seriously and coming to see environmental governance as a useful multipurpose tool for achieving economic development, energy security, social stability, environmental, and other goals.

In 2007, China released its first National Climate Change Program a few months before the UN climate conference in Bali. This program was hardly a custom-built program for climate action. It cobbled together myriad policies created for other reasons, including the one-child policy, deforestation policies aimed at preventing erosion and flooding, and long-term energy efficiency policies dating back to the 1980s.

In September 2009, President Hu Jintao, at the UN General Assembly, announced China’s first ever carbon target, to reduce the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic production by a “notable margin” (40–45% from 2005 levels by 2020). He also reiterated goals to increase the share of nonfossil fuels in China’s primary energy consumption to “around 15%” by 2020; and to increase forest coverage and forest stock volume. At the same time, the speech reiterated China’s long-established principles of CBDR, including “the imperative to give full consideration to the development stage and basic needs of developing countries,” and the responsibility of developed countries to provide financing and technology to the developing world. Even as China hewed to its traditional, more defensive positions, it was bringing to the international stage commitments enabled by evolving domestic environmental and energy governance reforms.

At the Copenhagen conference in December 2009, international scrutiny on China was intense, seemingly catching Chinese negotiators off-guard. The US aggressively sought to break down the bifurcated Kyoto Protocol structure and attempted to limit international funding to China for climate action. China persisted in a largely defensive strategy. This included repeated invocation of CBDR and moral appeals to emissions justice, including China’s relatively lower per capita and historical emissions and the contribution of developed country consumption to Chinese emissions (Conrad Reference Conrad2012; personal observations). Chinese interlocutors were combative. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said of the US climate negotiator “I think he lacks common sense when he made such a comment vis-a-vis China. He either lacks common sense or is extremely irresponsible.” China’s lone official side event, led by senior state think tank researcher Pan Jiahua, presented technical research arguing that the US and EU had already exceeded their fair share of carbon space and should pay China and the developing world to reduce emissions (personal observations). China formed a negotiating bloc of large, emerging economies with the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) to resist binding emissions reduction targets for developing countries. Chinese representatives expressed satisfaction that the line between developed and developing countries had been maintained (Watts 2009), even as China was roundly criticized in the Western media as a blocker of a deal in Copenhagen (Lynas Reference Lynas2009).

China’s public communications after Copenhagen were largely ineffective in countering this view. One of its first official communications post-Copenhagen, released on Christmas Day 2009, was a turgidly written article entitled “Verdant Mountains Cannot Stop Water Flowing; Eastward the River Keeps on Going – Premier Wen Jiabao at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference” that mostly seemed designed to shield Wen from any accusations that he had caused the Copenhagen debacle (Zhao, et al. Reference Zhao2009). A year later at 2010 climate meetings in Tianjin, statements from Chinese negotiators only perpetuated this global image of China as an intransigent player. NDRC’s Su Wei, for example, said the US was a “preening pig” that only criticized China and took inadequate measures to mitigate its own emissions (Buckley Reference Buckley2010). China’s aggressive and defensive diplomacy might have garnered some accolades among Global South countries, but it played poorly among Western audiences.

In the wake of Copenhagen, China seemed to change tack on its climate strategy. In subsequent years, China has devoted an extraordinary amount of energy and resources to climate strategy, policy reform, and public communications. In the Xi era, Chinese leaders have increasingly sought to present the country as a climate leader. Chinese climate action has served to reinforce broader Chinese foreign relations messaging emphasizing the “win-win” nature of China’s rise and arrival on the global stage. These moves have at times been presented in altruistic and moral terms by Chinese officials and interlocutors, or in civilizational terms (e.g., Chinese climate policy based on a “sense of responsibility to build a community with a shared future for mankind”). But most prominently, public messaging has emphasized more affirmative climate diplomacy and strengthened South–South climate cooperation.

Section 3.2.1 assesses changes in Chinese climate diplomacy, in particular China’s affirmative diplomacy efforts and its expansion of cooperation with Global South countries. Section 3.2.2 discusses China’s efforts domestically to comply with international climate obligations as well as critiques of those efforts. Section 3.2.3 examines how understandings of China’s climate action (or lack thereof) have affected discourses and policy responses in the US.

3.2.2 Domestic Climate Action: Accomplishments & Critiques

At Copenhagen, China could only bring to the table the beginnings of a comprehensive climate strategy. The country’s first national climate policy in 2007 was largely an assembly of policies previously created for other purposes. Over the subsequent nearly twenty years, China has developed a comprehensive purpose-built climate change governance framework that Chinese state and society actors have begun to present as a model for other nations, particularly those in the Global South.

The October 2023 edition of China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change (PRC MEE 2023), an official report issued by China’s environmental ministry, describes a substantial climate governance program and highlights successful Chinese performance against the key metrics listed in China’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) submission under the Paris Agreement (PRC 2022; see Table 3).

Table 3China NDC targets and progress

Table 3Long description

The table has 2 columns: Target and 2022 progress. It reads as follows. C O 2 emissions peak before 2030: General progress. Carbon neutrality before 2060: General progress. Lower C O 2 emissions per unit of GD P by 65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030: 51 percent. Share of nonfossil energy in primary energy consumption to 25 percent by 2030: 17.5 percent; total installed capacity of renewable energy 1.213 billion k W. Increase forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic meters from 2005 levels by 2030: Forest coverage rate at 24.02 percent (2021); forest stock of 19.493 billion cubic meters. Total installed capacity of wind and solar to 1.2 billion k W by 2030: 365 million k W wind; 393 million k W solar (and 41 million k W biomass; 368 million k W hydropower; 55 million k W nuclear).

The document further spells out Chinese policies and actions to mitigate GHG emissions, adapt to climate change, further develop the national carbon emissions trading market, and develop “policy systems and supportive measures” for climate action such as legislation, policies, and standards; economic policies; statistical, accounting, and monitoring systems; and low-carbon city pilot projects.

The targets in the NDC – including interim 2025 targets – are implemented through what officials call a “1+N” framework. The “1” refers to two key central-level documents: Guidelines for Comprehensive Implementation of the New Development Philosophy and the Achievement of Carbon Peak and Neutrality Work, and the Carbon Peaking Action Plan Before 2030. The “N” refers to sector-specific and industry-specific plans and complementary measures. The plans cover the key sectors for climate mitigation: energy, industry, transportation, construction, agriculture, recycling, carbon sinks, and others. The key industries covered include coal, oil, natural gas, steel, building materials, nonferrous metals, petrochemicals, and new infrastructure (5G, data centers, Internet infrastructure, and the like). The N also includes regional and provincial plans for achieving local carbon targets. Chinese state-owned enterprises are required (and private firms are encouraged) to develop their own carbon peaking action plans.

In addition, China has in a relatively short span of time developed world-leading clean energy and electric transportation manufacturing and deployment. In 2022, China accounted for 55% of global investment in renewable energy at nearly half a trillion US dollars (Schonhardt 2023). It has become the leading investor in wind turbines, solar PV, hydropower, biomass energy, electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, energy efficient air conditioning and refrigeration, and a host of other technologies. Chinese manufacturing innovation and industrial policy have also contributed to dramatic cost declines. The levelized cost of energy from utility-scale solar, onshore and offshore wind fell by 58–74% from 2013 to 2023 (IEA 2022). The price of a lithium-ion battery pack has fallen by 88%. Trade related to Chinese demand for the raw materials of the clean energy transition, such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel, have also become an important source of income in some countries. These China-led advances have transformed global possibilities for a clean energy transition.

Clean energy industries are now a major new source of economic growth that allow China to strengthen relationships with other countries through trade, investment, and supply of clean technologies while also making a contribution to achievement of global climate change and sustainable development goals. (Section 4 discusses these issues in greater detail in the context of China’s green economic statecraft.)

Despite these signs of progress, China’s climate actions remain contentious globally. For all who see China as a climate leader, there are equally vocal critics who consider China a climate laggard or a political threat. I discuss three areas of criticism: absolute emissions, China’s coal revival, and human rights.

Absolute Emissions. That China could be considered a climate leader at all might seem odd. China’s emissions more than tripled since China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 to nearly 12 billion tons in 2022 – by far the largest emissions of any country and accounting for nearly 30% of global emissions. In 2021, China’s emissions exceeded those in the US (11%), EU (7%), and India (7%) combined. The sheer volume of China’s annual emissions makes it difficult to think of China as a leader on climate action. Indeed, Climate Action Tracker has called China’s current climate targets, even if achieved, “highly insufficient” and “higher than what would be deemed 1.5 degrees C compatible.”Footnote ⁹

China has long countered this critique with arguments about emissions justice – noting China’s lower historic and per capita emissions and the substantial portion of Chinese emissions produced for developed country consumption. China’s economic rise, however, has rapidly altered these dynamics, such that Chinese per capita emissions now exceed per capita emissions in Europe. As of 2023, China passed the EU to become the second-largest historical emitter of GHGs, after only the US (Carbon Brief 2024). Also, with rising consumption of its own, the percentage of Chinese emissions associated with export has declined and China is now increasingly exporting emissions to other countries, replicating historic patterns of pollution export from the US and Europe to China.

Continued Reliance on Coal. China’s continued reliance on coal has been another source of vociferous global criticism. In 2023, China accounted for more than 50% of global consumption. In contrast to the full-throated support Chinese leaders have given to carbon peaking and neutrality targets, their public statements on coal have urged caution. Xi Jinping has spoken of a “build it before you break it” strategy (xianli houpo) – widely understood to be an admonition to move away from coal judiciously and only after firmly establishing a new system based on clean energy. This policy appeared to be motivated by concerns about energy security, national self-reliance, and the possibility of overzealous local bureaucratic compliance with new low-carbon targets.

Critics have been concerned that the policy represents Chinese backtracking on decarbonization or will allow local actors to undermine Chinese climate action. Outside observers have looked on in dismay as Chinese coal mines have reopened and permitting of coal plants has continued at a blistering pace. In 2022, Chinese regulators permitted “[a] total of 106 GW of new coal power projects …, the equivalent of two large coal power plants per week” (Myllyvirta Reference Myllyvirta2023). These plants have generally been designated as “supporting generation sources,” because national policy as of February 2022 prohibits approval of new coal-fired power plants for bulk power generation. Chinese interlocutors have said that new coal plants will not operate at significant hours since they are being built as back-up power to support grid stability and intermittent renewables, but it remains to be seen whether this will be the case in practice (Myllyvirta Reference Myllyvirta2023, p. 14).

Chinese overseas construction of coal plants has been another major point of contention. For a time, China’s role as the “world’s largest exporter of coal-fired power plant finance and technology” was considered by many a key reason China could not be considered a climate leader. Xi Jinping’s September 2021 announcement that China would no longer build new coal-fired power plants abroad has shifted attention to whether that pledge is being implemented. The issue of China’s overseas coal investments is discussed further in Section 4.

Human Rights. Human rights issues have also become part of discussions about climate change in at least two different ways. Most prominently, China has been accused of human rights violations related to its climate actions. Chinese firms have allegedly used forced Uyghur labor in solar PV manufacturing, benefitted from child labor in artisanal cobalt mining in the Congo, and enabled land grabs and poor labor conditions in Indonesian nickel mining (CECC 2023b; CRI 2024). Human rights groups have accused China of using “environmental policy as a tool of state control” (Wang Reference Wang2022). In response, Chinese officials and companies have generally denied these allegations or refused comment. Human rights concerns have been a major cause of negative public opinion toward China in developed countries (Silver Reference Silver2022a).

Moreover, Chinese limits on environmental civil society groups, lawyers, and media create a complicated environment for the implementation of climate policies and governance and threaten to constrain global access to information about Chinese climate action (Wang Reference Wang2018a). Environmental groups navigate complex political and legal dynamics to find space for advocacy (Gao & Teets Reference Gao and Teets2020). Lawyers and environmental lawsuits can face substantial barriers to litigating over the environment (Wang Reference Wang2011). Environmental journalists face censorship in reporting on pollution and climate change. A key concern is that both weak and overzealous implementation will not come to light absent a more open system of participation and accountability.

4.1 Fossil Energy Investment

Chinese overseas financing of fossil fuel energy projects has been a focal point for criticism of global China. More than 70% of the US $225 billion that Chinese overseas public development finance institutions – China Development Bank (CDB) and China Export-Import Bank (China Ex-Im Bank) – invested in energy projects from 2000 to 2017 was in fossil fuel projects (Kong Reference Kong2019, p. 17). This includes oil (41%), coal (20%), and gas (13%) projects. Of nonfossil projects, hydropower projects account for 18%, with the remainder (less than 10%) to nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal projects.

These investments increased rapidly in the years after the 2008 global financial crisis. Geographically, the projects had relatively even regional distribution with 28% each to Asia, Europe, and Latin American and 15% to Africa (Kong Reference Kong2019). The investments have been mostly in power generation (45%); exploration and extraction (36%); and transmission and distribution (10%) (Kong Reference Kong2019). During this period, China became the leader in overseas development finance for energy projects, passing other major financiers like the US, Japan, France, and South Korea. Between 2007 and 2014, Chinese overseas development finance for energy exceeded the combined amount of finance from Western-backed multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, ADB, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the African Development Bank.

Chinese overseas investments in coal-fired power plants have drawn the most vociferous criticism as incompatible with Paris Agreement goals. From 2006 to 2021, China was the world’s largest public financier of overseas coal-fired power plants with about 54 GW of coal power projects in twenty countries (Kong & Gallagher Reference Kong and Gallagher2021). The US government, the World Bank, and other institutions began to restrict financing for coal projects in 2013. After this exit from coal, China, Japan, and Korea were the only major public financiers of coal projects until 2020–21 (Wang et al. Reference Wang2024).

The academic literature has highlighted three primary drivers of Chinese overseas investment in coal projects: Chinese industrial policy, host country demand, and Chinese company initiative (Kong Reference Kong2019; Davidson et al. Reference Davidson2023, Nedopil Reference Nedopil2023; Wang et al. Reference Wang2024). Kong, for example, argues that Chinese industrial policy support for overseas energy projects is motivated by several needs: the search for new markets to absorb Chinese domestic overcapacity and to acquire advanced technologies, the need to manage foreign exchange risk, and demand for natural resources.

In September 2021, Xi Jinping announced at the UN General Assembly that China would “step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad” (Xinhua 2021). This announcement came a year after Japan and South Korea made similar announcements to restrict public finance of coal projects in 2020. China received plaudits for this move from many, although others expressed concern about whether the policy would be implemented effectively.

A complex mix of factors contributed to China shifting away from carbon intensive overseas investments. Davidson et al. (Reference Davidson2023) argue that China, Japan, and South Korea restricted public financing for coal projects in 2020 and 2021 because of reduced host country demand and international pressure to cease coal financing, which in turn weakened domestic Chinese coal interests opposed to an overseas coal ban. Since 2015, twenty-seven developing countries cancelled coal power projects amounting to 77% of the preconstruction pipeline in those countries. Scholars have also begun to unpack variation in host country demand through detailed ground-level studies. Liu et al. (Reference Liu2022) explain that Pakistan was more receptive to Chinese renewable energy investment because it had no domestic source of coal, and the construction of coal-fired power plants would only exacerbate energy security risk. In other countries, Chinese coal projects encountered active opposition and legal obstruction in several countries with resultant reputational harm for China. The Lamu coal power project – financed and developed by Chinese institutions – was halted by Kenyan courts after an environmental group (deCoalinize) sued, arguing that the government had not completed a proper environmental impact assessment (BBC 2019).

Nedopil (Reference Nedopil2023) likewise emphasizes increased economic, social, and political risks to explain Chinese willingness to retreat from overseas investment in coal. In addition to reduced host country demand for coal projects and local and global political opposition, the financial risks of coal projects have increased, including increased sovereign debt risk in recipient countries, higher financing costs as global investors exited from coal finance, greater coal price volatility, and rising average coal prices. After 2017, project developers and development banks alike became more cautious about coal power plants due to changed economics and increased disruptions related to environmental and social risks. China has been promoting the idea of “small yet beautiful projects” (xiao er mei) globally and this has been reflected in practice in lower average deal sizes in the last few years (Nedopil Reference Nedopil2025).

To summarize, lower host country demand, rising international and domestic pressure, and shifting economics for Chinese companies weakened the pull and push for such projects. Furthermore, the availability of a green alternative (and the participation of major Chinese companies in these alternatives) and the reputational gains of an overseas coal exit helped to weaken the China-side push. The revival of coal plant permitting and coal mining within China under the mantra of energy security and economic recovery post-COVID also relieved some of the overcapacity problem that would otherwise have been dealt with through overseas projects.

Have China’s pledges been implemented in practice? No new coal plants with Chinese participation have been announced since 2021 (Nedopil Reference Nedopil2025). Nedopil (Reference Nedopil2025) further notes that China’s 2024 overseas energy engagement was the “greenest since the BRI’s inception in 2013.” This included record investment in green energy (solar, wind, and biomass) and hydropower. At the same time, some coal power projects commenced before 2021 – such as Bangladesh’s Barisal 2 and Gacko II in Bosnia – continued after the 2021 announcement, and China has continued overseas investment in other types of fossil fuel projects (e.g., gas, oil, and coal mining).

4.2 Clean Energy Technologies

Clean energy technologies are at the heart of China’s new approach to green development. These refer most prominently to what are colloquially known as “the new three” (xin san yang) – solar power, EVs, and batteries. But they also include wind power, hydrogen electrolyzers, hydropower, energy efficiency, rail, grid, nuclear power and a host of other categories of goods and services. In 2023, investment and the value of goods and services in clean energy industries amounted to 9% of China’s entire GDP and year-on-year growth in clean energy accounted for 40% of all GDP growth (Myllyvirta Reference Myllyvirta2024).

The original motivations for state support of these industries were in significant part economic (Hilton Reference Hilton2024). They have been included in several waves of what Chen and Naughton (Reference Chen and Naughton2016) have called “techno-industrial policy.” After a period of increased marketization and the retreat of the state during the 1980s and 90s, China began a long-term embrace of industrial policy after 2003 that continues to this day. In contrast to industrial policy in Japan and Korea, which was oriented toward technological “catch up,” Chinese techno-industrial policy has been aimed at leap-frogging existing technologies to seek growth in industries without dominant global incumbents. As previously mentioned, motivations for industrial policy support of clean technologies in particular include energy security, mitigation of environmental limits to development, pollution reduction, social unrest, and international pressures for China to address climate change (Boyd Reference Boyd2012; personal observations).

Importantly, China’s push to develop clean technology industries was also motivated by a “conviction that China has an historic opportunity to position itself as an economic and technological leader in a global transition towards low-carbon energy” (Boyd Reference Boyd2012). Boyd (Reference Boyd2012) discusses the writings of Hu Angang, a well-known professor at Tsinghua University, in this regard as indicative of the motivations behind China’s support for clean technologies:

The state push for renewable energy included the passage of China’s Renewable Energy Law (2005) and the elevation of renewable energy to a national priority in the Mid- to Long-term Development Plan for Renewable Energy (2007). Solar, wind, and electric vehicles were listed as favored industries within China’s 2010 Strategic Emerging Industries policy and the 2015 Made in China 2025 strategy. Sectoral plans in China’s 13th and 14th five-year plans (2016–25) included targets for renewable energy and new energy vehicles. Batteries received support for research and development from MOST’s 863 program, and Chinese EV manufacturers benefitted from a host of subsidies and policies promoting technology transfer and access to critical raw materials that set the stage for China’s later global dominance in battery and EV supply chains (Graham Reference Graham2021).

Clean Energy Manufacturing. This sustained policy and fiscal support have helped Chinese companies to achieve global dominance in key clean energy technologies. For example:

• Solar. China’s global share of silica-based solar PV modules manufacturing was more than 70% in 2021. Share of the production of the cells that compose these modules was more than 80%, and the share of wafers used to manufacture cells was more than 90% (IEA 2023).

• Wind. Chinese companies account for more than 55% of global wind turbine manufacturing capacity in 2021 (He et al. 2022).

• EVs and Batteries. China dominates at every stage of the EV and battery supply chain, accounting for more than 60% share of EV manufacturing capacity, three-quarters of global battery cell production, nearly 80% of cathode production, and more than 90% of anode production (IEA 2024a, p. 30). It also dominates in the material processing of critical minerals like graphite (nearly 100%), cobalt (about 75%), and lithium (more than 60%). Critical minerals mining is more geographically diverse, but Chinese companies are active in all the key jurisdictions, including Australia and Chile (lithium), Indonesia (nickel), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (cobalt).

Clean Energy Deployment. China has also been a global leader in domestic deployment of clean energy technologies, driven by fiscal and policy support aimed at meeting the industrial policy, energy security, geopolitical, and reputational objectives discussed earlier.

• Solar. As of 2024, China had a world-leading 660 GW of installed solar capacity. In 2023 alone, China added 216.9 GW, more than the entire solar installed capacity in the second-place country, the US.

• Wind. China is the global leader in installed onshore and offshore wind capacity as well. It had 475 GW of onshore wind at the end of 2023, nearly triple the amount of wind power installed in the US. Offshore wind installations reached 31.5 GW with the UK in second place at 14.5 GW. The US accounts for less than 1% of global offshore wind deployment as of this writing.

• Electric vehicles. Slightly more than half of EVs (BEV and PHEV) globally were registered in China as of 2023, compared to 28% in Europe, only 12% in the US, and a mere 6% in the rest of the world (IEA 2024b).

Perhaps more than any other aspect of Chinese global environmentalism, China’s progress on clean energy technologies has garnered China accolades among global and domestic audiences. These technologies are essential for the achievement of global climate targets, such as the goal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 agreed to at COP28 in Dubai. Chinese manufacture and deployment of these technologies has dramatically lowered costs. This in turn has allowed for global deployment to far exceed projections and increases the likelihood of successful clean energy transitions in developed and developing countries alike.

Yet Chinese dominance has raised strategic concerns in the US and Europe and an aggressive policy response. Current debates in the US and other developed countries have raised a diverse range of reasons to oppose Chinese clean technology dominance, including concerns about unfair trade practices, prevention of espionage, supply chain resilience, human rights, protection of developed country jobs and their pillar industries like the auto industry, and realist concerns about maintaining a substantial enough edge over China in power.

The Biden administration implemented a broad policy response to this Chinese dominance in clean energy technologies. In May 2024, the administration announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs, 25% tariffs on EV batteries from China and certain critical minerals, and an increase in Chinese solar panel tariffs to 50%. To compete with Chinese industrial policy, Congress also passed three pieces of legislation – the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act – that collectively set forth the contours of an American industrial policy in clean energy technologies, mobilizing hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy, EVs, and other technologies. Biden also signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which created a rebuttable presumption that goods made in Xinjiang (such as solar raw materials and products) are made with forced labor. These measures came on top of solar tariffs the Trump administration imposed in 2018 and Obama-era solar tariffs imposed in 2012 and 2014–15. The US also brought and won a WTO trade case against China between 2012 and 2014 concerning Chinese export controls on rare earth metals, tungsten, and molybdenum. The EU has responded to Chinese dominance in clean energy technologies with measures of its own. These include tariffs on imported Chinese EVs and laws like the Net-Zero Industry Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act, which incentivize domestic EU clean energy technology production and aim to ensure secure and sustainable access to critical minerals.

These are the contours of the contestation over Chinese clean energy dominance. The competing narratives could not differ more starkly. Contrast, for example, the US Trade Representative’s characterization of Chinese practices as predatory and unfair to more positive accounts in the literature arguing that China’s clean energy dominance has come from sustained policy support, industry clusters, global links, and talent cultivation (Nahm Reference Nahm2021; Hove Reference Hove2024; USTR 2024). It remains uncertain which narratives will prevail, but if China continues to be seen as an enemy to the US and Europe then policies to constrain and limit Chinese clean technologies will persist.

4.3 Chinese Green Development in Chile

Our final case of this section looks at Chinese green development in Chile as an example of contention over China occurring beyond the US and Europe. Chile has become a country of interest in the geopolitical competition between China and the US/Europe in significant part because it is a major source of copper and lithium – two critical minerals essential to the global clean energy transition. Chile is also a country with aggressive plans to decarbonize domestically. Chile has abundant renewable resources with national strategic plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and 80% of the energy mix from renewables by 2030 (WEF 2024). Chile also has announced plans to become a global leader in the export of green hydrogen (WEF 2024).

This snapshot of the Chilean situation reveals a few initial findings. First, China has offered important support for the Chilean economy through trade and investment. In recent years, this has been concentrated in areas related to green development. For Chilean goals of moving up the value chain, Chinese firms have also been more willing to strike deals, whereas US and European actors have not so far moved much beyond rhetoric. Second, American and European officials have sought to warn Chileans of the security risks associated with Chinese engagement, but this has not to date driven the same sort of hawkish response in Chile that we have seen in the US and to a lesser extent the EU. Third, although Chilean companies and politicians have been less receptive to security arguments, they express concern about excessive economic reliance on China and are actively seeking to diversify their economic engagements in the green development space.

Historically, Chile and China have what both sides have called a “special relationship” (Bartlett Reference Bartlett2024). Under socialist president Salvador Allende, Chile was the first country in South America to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC on December 15, 1970. Chile continued ties with China after General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état, despite the Pinochet regime’s anti-Communist leanings and embrace of free market policies. Chilean copper exports to China underpinned (and still underpin) an emerging commercial trade relationship. Chile was the first Latin American country to support China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, and it was the first individual nation to sign a free trade agreement with China in 2005. Trade between the two countries grew at a staggering pace – from US$8.1 billion in 2005 to $57.2 billion in 2023 with China becoming Chile’s top trade partner after 2009, passing the US. As of 2022, China purchased nearly 40% of Chilean exports, including about 70% of copper exports. Chilean experts worry about excessive reliance on trade with China and hope for greater diversification among China, the US, Europe, and other Asian countries like Japan and Korea.

Chinese foreign direct investment in Chile was not an important part of the relationship until the 2010s. As of 2014, Chile became one of China’s top ten destinations for FDI and after 2018 has been the leading country in Latin America and the Caribbean for Chinese investment, with major, USD multibillion-dollar investments in critical minerals and electricity generation, transmission, and distribution.

The first major Chinese investment in Chile came with State Power Investment Corporation’s (SPIC) 2016 acquisition of Pacific Hydro from an Australian pension fund. SPIC is one of China’s five largest power generation companies. Pacific Hydro held US $1 billion in largely hydropower assets in Chile at the time of acquisition and has since completed an 82 MW wind farm with further plans to develop major wind and solar farm projects. This was followed by Tianqi Lithium’s purchase of a 24% stake in Chile’s Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM), completed in 2018. Tianqi, a private Chinese company, and SQM were the third and fourth largest lithium companies in the world by production value in 2018 and major players in the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.

Chinese companies have since completed several USD billion-dollar transactions involving Chilean electric grid assets as well. In 2018, China Southern Power Grid purchased a 27.7% stake in Transelec from Canada’s Brookfield Infrastructure for US $1.3 billion. Transelec is Chile’s main electricity transmission provider with power lines reaching 98% of the Chilean public. State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) purchased Chilquinta Energia from US company Sempra Energy for US $2.23 billion in 2020 and 97% of CGE from Spain’s Naturgy Energy Group for US $3.03 billion in 2021. These are two of Chile’s four main electricity distribution companies, representing 57% of the country’s distribution system. Chinese companies have further invested in other renewable energy projects (wind, solar, hydropower), train and commuter rail lines, salmon aquaculture, and fruit farms.

China is also beginning to play a role in Chile’s move toward electrified transportation. Chile’s 2021 National Electromobility Strategy sets nonbinding targets for 100% zero-emission vehicles for new sales of urban buses and light-duty and light commercial vehicles by 2035 and freight transport and intercity buses by 2045 (Chilean Govt. 2022; Delgado & Logiodice Reference Delgado and Logiodice2025). Chile has also announced plans to sell only EV passenger vehicles after 2035 and to achieve 40% passenger EV penetration by 2050 (Urrutia-Mosquera & Flórez-Calderón Reference Urrutia-Mosquera and Flórez-Calderón2024). As of this writing, Santiago boasts the largest municipal electric bus fleet outside of China and has 2550 e-buses in operation with 4,406 expected by the end of 2025 (Sustainable Bus 2025). The fleet appears to be composed entirely of Chinese e-buses from Foton, BYD, Yutong, King Long, Zhongtong, and Higer (Sustainable Bus 2025).

This Chinese investment has raised some political concerns within Chile, although the deals have mostly been approved. Chinese company purchases of grid assets and the Tianqi Lithium acquisition have drawn the most scrutiny. These led to proposals (ultimately not approved) to establish a committee for security review of foreign investments or to allow Chile’s congress to block investments of strategic assets by foreign SOEs (Fuentes Reference Fuentes2020).

A closer look at the Tianqi Lithium acquisition is illustrative. Although copper remains Chile’s most important export, lithium is a rapidly growing area central to electric vehicles production. Chile is the second largest producer of lithium (49,000 tons in 2024) after Australia (88,000 tons in 2024) with extraction operations run by SQM and US company Albemarle in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert (USGS 2025, p. 111). Other major producers include China, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Brazil. Tianqi’s acquisition from Canadian fertilizer company, Nutrien, when proposed, faced an antitrust appeal from Chile’s development agency Corfo, which expressed concern that the acquisition would “gravely distort market competition” (De la Jara 2018). Tianqi is also a 51% owner of the Greenbushes mine in Western Australia, the world’s largest hard-rock lithium mine.

Although Tianqi itself has repeatedly emphasized that it is a private company, Chinese officials made clear that they would act on behalf of the company if necessary. In 2018, as Tianqi’s proposed deal underwent antitrust review, China’s ambassador to Chile Xu Bu threatened Chile, saying that it would “leave negative influences on the development of economic and commercial relations between both countries” if Chile did not approve the Tianqi transaction (Jamasmie Reference Jamasmie2018). Chilean authorities ultimately allowed the deal but imposed limits on Tianqi’s board membership and its access to sensitive SQM business information.

Despite these concerns, Chileans seem to have viewed US warnings about China with some skepticism. Several interviewees I spoke to in Santiago suggested that US warnings were seen as hypocritical given past US interventions in Chilean politics. They contrasted US support for the overthrow of the Allende government with a positive, long-term trade relationship with China. They also commented on the negative optics of US Southern Command (Southcom) director Laura Richardson – the leading American military officer in the region – publicly warning of Chinese influence in Chile, while also working with US companies in the region to “box out” China on lithium (see, e.g., Atlantic Council 2023, at 45:00–46:00).

Contributing to Chile’s openness to China is the fact that Chinese companies have been willing to take up Chilean invitations to help the country move up the EV value chain, whereas the US and Europe are seen as raising warnings about risk from China without taking actions that benefit Chile (interview with Chilean academic 2023). For example, the Boric administration in Chile has sought to tie access to lithium concessions to commitments to invest in lithium processing capacity within Chile. At present, China dominates lithium processing and much of Chile’s raw lithium is shipped to China for further processing. In response to Chilean calls, two Chinese companies – BYD and Tsingshan – agreed to build lithium processing in Chile. In 2023, Tsingshan announced a plan to invest US $233 million in a lithium iron phosphate plant in Chile in exchange for preferential prices for lithium from SQM until 2030. Chilean President Boric said in relation to the Tsingshan announcement: “We are not going to limit ourselves only to the extraction of nonmetallic minerals, but we are also going to create value chains and also transfer knowledge because one of the commitments that the company has made is to generate exchange programmes for Chilean professionals to travel to China and also train in the development of this industry.” Chinese company BYD announced a similar deal for a lithium cathode plant in northern Chile in 2023. In a major setback, though, Chile’s Corfo announced the termination of both projects in May 2025, citing changing global market dynamics and declining lithium prices (Lu & Han Reference Lu and Han2025). A new Corfo tender seeking proposals for high-value-added lithium projects issued in April 2025 has had no takers as of this writing.

US and European actors have shown interest in working with Chile but have not yet announced new deals. Former US Ambassador to Chile, Bernadette Meehan, announced in 2024 that US companies have shown “intense interest” in expanding lithium extraction and production of lithium-based products (Canbero & Solomon Reference Canbero and Solomon2024). German Chancellor Olaf Scholz suggested during a January 2023 trip to Chile that German companies would help Chile to move up the value chain and avoid Chinese exploitation, but no German companies have to date stepped forward to implement the pledge (Osborn Reference Osborn2023). Some in Chile have also noted the risk that the US Inflation Reduction Act may harm Chilean green development goals by pulling investment away from Chile to the US with its generous subsidies for green hydrogen and other clean investments (interview with Chilean official 2024).

Moreover, the US has played a role in blocking or creating difficulties for several high-profile China-related investments outside of the clean technology space. A proposed submarine fiber optic cable between Chile and China was canceled after warnings from then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018. In 2021, Chile canceled a contract originally awarded to Chinese technology firm Aisino to produce Chilean identity cards and passports after US officials raised security concerns and threatened to revoke Chilean visa waiver status if the deal were to go through (MERICS 2022).

Chile is a quintessential example of what I have called a pragmatic response to China’s rise. Chilean government and business elites see engagement with China as desirable in significant part because the economic opportunities of the relationship are too important to ignore. What’s more, China’s recent focus on green development promises to combine economic and environmental opportunities in a manner attractive to Chileans. The threat of Chinese inroads has also appeared to generate competition among other countries for Chilean favor. In 2022, for example, the US initiated the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity as a counter to Chinese investment in Latin America, although the effort was criticized for lacking investment resources (Hawkins Reference Hawkins2023).

How are different segments of Chilean society responding to Chinese engagement with Chile? Here we have largely considered Chilean political and economic elites who make policy and consummate business deals. Academics with a critical view of past US interventions in Chile have also been receptive to Chinese economic engagements with Chile (interviews with Chilean academics 2023, 2024). While many were cognizant of potential risks of economic dependency on China, they also offered that Chilean institutions were up to the task of mitigating potential problems. What of environmentalists? Local green groups I spoke with were taking a wait-and-see approach. They were aware of Western critiques of Chinese environmental impacts in Latin America, but were still learning about Chinese actions in Chile (interview with Chilean environmentalists 2023). The largest Chinese lithium investment in Chile was merely a financial stake in the Chilean lithium company, rather than extraction carried out by Chinese actors. Environmental concerns about the impact of lithium extraction on ecosystems and local flora and fauna like the pink flamingo are growing, but China has not been the focal point of criticisms here given the leading role of SQM and Albemarle. If Chinese companies follow through on pledges to build industrial facilities in Chile, critiques of the environmental impacts of Chinese projects may grow louder. These debates go beyond China and center on the economic and environmental tradeoffs presented by a low-carbon transition or economic development in general, but China will more likely become the target of critiques as its role grows.

5.1 CCICED and BRIGDC

CCICED was established in 1992 (the year of the Rio Conference) as a high-level, multilateral platform for helping senior Chinese officials address China’s burgeoning environmental challenges (Zhao & Hanson Reference Zhao and Hanson2024). The Canadian International Development Agency was the lead donor with contributions from other countries such as Norway, Sweden, and the UK. Initial Chinese leadership included senior Chinese environmental officials, Qu Geping, Song Jian, and Xie Zhenhua. The platform’s initial structure was indicative of its time, in which China sought advice and resources from the developed world. In addition to what China sought from the world, CCICED has also always provided a forum for Chinese leaders and researchers to convey messages to global environmental elites about Chinese progress on environmental protection. This has been particularly true in the Xi era of ecological civilization. CCICED has served as a point of contact for Chinese actors with the EU, the World Economic Forum, US EPA, UN officials, and others. In the Xi era, CCICED task forces have increasingly focused on China’s global engagement. In 2016, it created a task force on South–South Cooperation for Ecological Civilization. In 2018, CCICED initiated a policy study on greening the Belt and Road Initiative.

BRIGDC is of much more recent vintage, launched at the Second Belt and Road Forum in April 2019 in Beijing and led by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment and international partners. President Xi had proposed the BRIGDC two years before at the first BRI Forum in May 2017. BRIGDC is a global China-initiated multilateral institution with some 134 partners. The range of environmental issues and industrial sectors covered is as broad as the concept of green development itself, and includes green infrastructure, finance, governance, and a host of other issues. The stated purpose of BRIGDC is:

BRIGDC is meant to be a platform for policy dialogue and communication; environmental knowledge and information sharing; and green technology exchange and transfer. BRIGDC regularly produces policy reports and publishes the BRI Green Review. BRIGDC is a sophisticated institution that is more integrated into international networks than past Chinese cooperation efforts. For example, BRIGDC’s inaugural executive director is Zhang Jianyu, an international environmental advocate who led the work of the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund in China for many years.

BRIGDC has been the subject of debates over whether it represents “green development or greenwashing” (Harlan Reference Harlan2021). BRIGDC is framed in the official rhetoric of Chinese development cooperation as a genuine effort at policy promotion and Chinese motivations for participation are described in altruistic or depoliticized pragmatic terms. BRIGDC has shown some potential to be a site of genuine information exchange, deliberation, and policy formation. For example, a December 2020 BRIGDC policy study proposed a “traffic light system” to “accelerate green and reduce brown investment” (BRIGDC 2020b). That policy report called for Chinese overseas investments to engage in green development by considering pollution control, climate change, and biodiversity protection. Most famously, it called for an exclusion list of projects not to be funded and a ranking of projects (red, yellow, green) according to environmental and social impact. It also called for projects to adhere to international environmental standards and to create grievance mechanisms for people and NGOs to use in the event of complaints. BRIGDC recommendations also encouraged Chinese companies to adhere to higher international or Chinese standards if host country rules are considered insufficient. These provisions were incorporated into MEE and MOFCOM Green Development Guidelines for Foreign Investment and Cooperation published in July 2021.

Critical accounts highlight the role of BRIGDC as mainly a symbolic effort to bolster “the BRI’s reputation as a sustainable, win-win project” that “outweighs its practical contribution to environmental protection” (Geng & Lo Reference Geng and Lo2023, p. 1181). More controversially, BRIGDC can serve as a forum for coopting global elites and persuading them of the legitimacy of Chinese environmental efforts. From the perspective of Chinese leadership, BRIGDC has a variety of advantages. It is a multilateral, but Chinese-led, body for transnational regulation that provides Chinese leaders with direct access to global environmental elites from the UN and other international organizations, major international civil society organizations, the environmental agencies in Global South countries, and major Chinese companies active in BRI projects. As a China-initiated governance institution, it symbolizes Chinese commitment to global goals of the Paris Agreement, the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and others. In contrast to CCICED, BRIGDC is increasingly framed in terms of China bringing lessons in green development to the world. BRIGDC also emerged in a period where Chinese leaders had begun to speak about strategic objectives to “perfect and reform the current international system” (Sun & Yu Reference Sun and Yu2023). As an engagement-oriented, information-sharing body, it is a depoliticized space for addressing issues that have caused serious reputational damage to China and increased the risks of China’s outbound investment and trade (Sun & Yu Reference Sun and Yu2023, p. 101). It is not a forum where strong critics will likely have a voice. Its focus on dialogue, joint research, and voluntary standard setting in the context of a Chinese-led institution is cooperative in nature and generates little risk of unwanted pressures or constraints. The characteristics that make the forum appealing to Chinese leaders has generated skepticism from outside observers who see the messaging function of the institution as overriding its role in generating better environmental policy and outcomes (Geng & Lo Reference Geng and Lo2023).

5.2 Kenya Standard Gauge Railway

In contrast to CCICED and BRIGDC, the multiphase Kenya Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project offers an example of a project-specific response to environmental risks. The Kenya SGR is a $10 billion multiphase railway project. The first phase, completed in August 2017, extends from the port city of Mombasa westward through the capital city of Nairobi. Later phases of the project extend the SGR from Nairobi to Naivasha (completed in 2019), and from Naivasha to Malaba on the Uganda-Kenya border (Xia Reference Xia2019). The Kenya SGR can be understood both as a response to local demand in Kenya and as a product of Chinese political economy dynamics; that is, China’s Going Out policy as a “relocation of the domestic contradictions of capital accumulation” to Global South countries and a means of addressing China’s domestic overcapacity problems (Huang & Lesutis Reference Huang and Lesutis2023).

The main contractors for the project have been China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) and its parent company China Communications Construction Company, one of China’s largest central SOEs with significant business in BRI countries. The project is a key part of Kenya’s national development program “Vision 2030.” CRBC took the lead in securing the project with the Kenyan government and sought funding from China Export-Import Bank, which financed 90% of the initial phases of the project. In 2019, China Ex-Im Bank pulled its financial support for the project after the SGR was extended from Nairobi to Naivasha, due to concerns about the financial profitability of the project and the inability to come to terms on financing (CGSP 2025). As of early 2025, the project faced a revenue shortfall of US $7.8 million per month (Olander Reference Olander2025). A newly announced public-private partnership deal between Chinese companies, China Ex-Im Bank, and the Kenyan government in April 2025 would revive the last phase of the project allowing it to connect to Uganda and bring it closer to the ultimate goal of connecting with mining regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (CGSP 2025).

The project has been controversial on multiple fronts, including allegations of corruption and lack of transparency; concerns about cost and debt; economic harm to the trucking industry and ancillary economies around trucking routes that faced reduced business in the wake of the Kenya SGR; and adverse environmental impacts (Dahir Reference Dahir2022).

In the context of the non-environmental impacts of the project, Huang and Lesutis (Reference Huang and Lesutis2023, p. 1593) argue that the Chinese contractor responded to controversies over the SGR in ways that reflected the “hybridity” of the firm – that is, that it considered both its own profit motives and Chinese state concerns about China-Kenya diplomatic relationships, the role of the Kenyan SGR as a symbol of China’s BRI, and that CRBC behavior would be perceived as representative of how “Chinese enterprises” behave beyond Chinese borders. They document how this resulted in the Chinese contractor taking unusually proactive steps in managing land acquisition and compensation and in agreeing to operate the SGR (eventually at a loss) because of pressure to ensure that the project was operated successfully and perceived as a success in the public eye. In another study, Li & Wang (Reference Li and Wang2023) found that CRBC responded to local media reports criticizing CRBC’s lack of operational transparency, racist treatment of workers, and harm to local Kenyan businesses through more proactive media engagement and public relations, as well as trainings for Chinese employees on anti-racism; in other words, a mix of public relations and substantive response to criticisms. These studies suggest that firms are willing to adapt to local pressures in the name of project success and mitigation of political and reputational risk. Li & Wang also contrast the relative responsiveness of CRBC in Kenyan to unresponsive Chinese SOEs in neighboring Ethiopia. They attribute the difference to more active local Kenyan media and civil society as compared to Ethiopia.

Chinese SOE responses to environmental concerns have reflected a similar kind of responsiveness; however, differing views of the proper relationship between development and the environment very much determine whether one sees such responses as acceptable or not. The Kenya SGR has been the subject of criticism regarding its environmental impacts as the project traverses several national parks. Identified impacts include ecosystem degradation from soil, water, and air contamination; soil erosion and flooding; introduction of invasive species; ecosystem fragmentation and destruction; and disturbance of movement patterns for wildlife through physical barriers, noise, and other pollution (Xia Reference Xia2019; Okita-Ouma et al. Reference Okita-Ouma2021). China Ex-Im Bank carried out an environmental and social impact assessment prior to funding the project, considering pollution, health impacts, land acquisition needs, and forced resettlement. Local environmental groups brought several lawsuits against the project, arguing among other things that the project’s environmental impact assessment did not adequately consider alternatives to mitigate environmental harms. This advocacy led to some project changes, such as elevation of segments of the railway to limit impacts on animal migration and some rerouting to bypass sensitive areas (Xia Reference Xia2019).

Chinese accounts of the project perhaps unsurprisingly emphasize the environmental mitigation efforts and downplay ongoing environmental harms. For example, a BRIGDC book authored by a team affiliated with China’s MEE, entitled The Belt and Road Initiative Green Development Case Studies Report 2020, contains a lead case study on the Nairobi-Malaba phase of the Kenyan SGR (BRIGDC 2022). It implicitly acknowledges environmental and labor criticisms by describing mitigation measures, such as the construction of an elevated “national park bridge” with noise barriers “to minimize the impact on wildlife,” or the use of machine-made sand to avoid the need to dredge from local rivers. The BRIGDC case study makes no mention, however, of negative environmental impacts of earlier phases of the SGR, which bisected and exacerbated fragmentation in Kenya’s Tsavo Conservation Area (Koskei et al., 2022; Lala et al., Reference Lala2022; Okita-Ouma et al., Reference Okita-Ouma2021). It also does not grapple with other studies that have found the project’s environmental mitigation measures to be inadequate (Jiang Reference Jiang2020). Underpasses designed to reduce habitat fragmentation and allow animal crossings are too few and far between and these areas are contaminated by oil, noise, and other pollution in a manner that has caused distress among native species such as African elephants (Okita-Ouma, et al. Reference Okita-Ouma2021). The barriers on elephant movement created by the SGR have also led to increased human-elephant conflict (Tsavo Trust 2025). The report also makes no mention of controversy (including litigation) over the siting of the SGR through Nairobi National Park, another key wildlife conservation area in Kenya (Mwangi et al. Reference Mwangi2022; Lekalhaile Reference Lekalhaileundated). A different BRIGDC report authored by a group of Chinese and international experts is more candid about the known environmental problems of the Kenya SGR and offers more specific guidance on the range of environmental risks to consider, but it still omits discussion of concerns from independent researchers that mitigation measures have been inadequate (BRIGDC 2021, pp. 5–7, 42). A Xinhua report is the least circumspect about continuing environmental problems, declaring outright that the railway is “in harmony with wildlife conservation” (Xinhua 2022).

Ultimately, the Kenya SGR case represents a familiar conflict between development and the environment. Early stages of the project appeared to have generated the most serious impacts (e.g., insufficient passage for wildlife, continuing fragmentation of major ecosystems, exacerbation of human–wildlife conflict), but controversies like the passage of the SGR through Nairobi National Park have resulted in compromise and mitigation measures that improve on problems in the earlier phases of the project (e.g., by elevating the train to heights of 7.5 m to 41.5 m or installing sound barriers) while at the same time rejecting environmentalists’ proposals to build outside of the park (Mwangi, et al. Reference Mwangi2022; AFP 2018; personal observations).

At minimum, the case of the Kenya SGR is more complicated than it might seem at first blush. It is not obvious that Chinese firms are underperforming firms from other countries with similar projects or that the resultant measures are not a reasonable accommodation among competing considerations (development, environment, cost, timely completion, etc.). The routing of the Kenya SGR through Nairobi National Park, for example, may have been attractive to the government because it would require lesser amounts of land compensation as compared to alternative routes and less delay from negotiations with property owners (Wissenbach & Wang Reference Wissenbach and Wang2017). What’s more, a 2024 Pew poll showed that high percentages of Kenyan respondents had strong or moderately favorable views of Chinese company impacts on the local economy, work to protect the environment, and treatment of local workers (Silver et al. Reference Silver2024), suggesting that compromises by Chinese firms may have had a salutary effect on public opinion.

That said, for environmentalists, the Kenya SGR is but one component of a broader push to transform Kenya into a “newly-industrializing, middle-income country” that will create ever-growing pressure on the local environment and wildlife through more roads, railways, power plants, power lines, and real estate development (Mwangi et al. Reference Mwangi2022). Overly positive statements from official Chinese media and incomplete discussion of environmental problems in BRIGDC materials create a sense that Chinese actors are unwilling to grapple with these larger dynamics or worse are engaged in obfuscation or greenwashing.

5.3 Lancang-Mekong Environmental Cooperation Center

I conclude with the case of the Lancang-Mekong Environmental Cooperation Center (LMEC). China established the LMEC in November 2017 as the environmental component of a broader regional cooperation mechanism among six countries along the Lancang/Mekong River basin (Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) known as the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) (Biba Reference Biba2018; Geall Reference Geall2019). The cooperation boasted Chinese state support from the highest levels: Premier Li Keqiang proposed the mechanism at the 1^st Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting in Sanya in March 2016 and Chinese environmental vice-minister Huang Runqiu headlined the launch of the initiative in November 2017 (PRC MEE 2017). The LMC itself addresses a broader range of non-environmental issues under a “3+5 cooperation framework,” which refers to three pillars and five priority areas for cooperation. The pillars are political and security issues; economic and sustainable development; and social, cultural and people-to-people exchanges. The priority areas are connectivity; production capacity; cross-border economic cooperation; water resources; agriculture; and poverty reduction.

The LMC/LMEC serves as a bellwether for several reasons. It is a case in which China holds significant power through its upstream position and its influence on the regional economy (Ho Reference Ho2014). In the face of vociferous criticisms about environmental, social, and economic impacts, China has employed what is becoming a familiar composite strategy of developmental “carrots,” depoliticization through dialogue and technocratic exchange, and the creation of a governance mechanism (the LMC/LMEC) that allows China to shape agendas and neutralize criticism. The region has also become a site of geopolitical competition with the LMC/LMEC gaining influence relative to more US-oriented institutions like the Mekong River Commission (MRC) or the Obama-era Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) that later became the Trump-era Mekong-US Partnership (MUP).Footnote ¹² The LMC/LMEC raises concerns about excessive Chinese influence, misinformation, and insufficient consideration of less powerful communities downstream. Yet, it is also an institution that has gained traction due to China’s relative power and the comparatively modest impact of alternatives like the MRC or the LMI/MUP (Geall Reference Geall2019; Johnson & Wongcha-Um Reference Johnson and Wongcha-Um2020). How China manages tensions in the region from a position of relative power will offer insight into Chinese global environmentalism more broadly.

The source of environmental tension driving the creation of LMC/LMEC was China’s construction of eleven mainstream dams and ninety-five tributary dams along the Lancang River (what China calls the portion of the Mekong River within its borders). China’s stated motivations for dam construction have been economic development, flood and drought management, clean energy, and improvement of navigation. Critics of China’s actions in the Lancang/Mekong watershed argue that Chinese dams are a threat to the natural environment and the livelihoods of tens of millions of people downstream. China’s damming of the upper reaches of the Mekong impacts the downstream Mekong River watershed and has caused conflicts over Chinese control of downstream water supply, harms to fisheries and other ecosystems, and loss of soil fertility. Chinese dams trap significant amounts of sediment flow with negative impacts on agriculture and aquatic life in the Mekong Delta downstream (Ho Reference Ho2014). The most vocal critics have been Western governments and civil society, as well as local communities and environmentalists (Eyler Reference Eyler2020; ICG 2024, pp. 27–28).

Non-Chinese scholars have identified several aspects of the Chinese response to these controversies. I group these aspects into three categories: geopolitical, economic, and environmental.

Geopolitical. Biba (Reference Biba2018) argues that China was motivated to create the LMC/LMEC to increase its role in Mekong governance as a counter to US moves to build closer ties in the region and to find synergies with the broader objectives of other Chinese initiatives like the BRI and AIIB. Ha (Reference Ha2022) argues that China’s active Mekong water diplomacy is driven by foreign policy objectives to “ensure a stable and friendly periphery in the basin and to manage the Mekong basin as a “new front for US-China rivalry in Southeast Asia.”

This is consistent with how the US government sees the LMC/LMEC. US Secretary of State under Trump Mike Pompeo criticized China’s upstream dams for concentrating control over downstream flows and warned ASEAN nations that the LMC was “a push to craft new Beijing-directed rules to govern the river” that would usurp the role of the Mekong River Commission, which received substantial funding from Western donors, or the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), a 1992 initiative of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which received major funding from the US and Japan.

China has attempted to neutralize such concerns by framing the LMC/LMEC as a partnership among equals with shared objectives, rather than a situation with significant power imbalances in China’s favor. According to Chinese environmental vice-minister Huang Runqiu, “[t]he Lancang and Mekong countries as developing countries share similar economic and environmental issues with China which is also a developing country. Our common goals are to share green experience, improve environmental quality, and promote the sustainable development of the countries concerned” (PRC MEE 2017).

Economic. The LMC/LMEC also seeks to depoliticize environmental controversies over Chinese dams by situating them in the broader context of economic development. As previously stated, the LMEC’s environmental agenda is decentered by its placement among the five priority areas within the broader LMC, which focus heavily on economic development. China has promoted the developmental aspect of LMC through a contribution of more than US$300 million to an LMC Special Fund that has supported over 700 projects.Footnote ¹³ This approach of placing environmental considerations squarely within broader developmental discussions is a hallmark of Chinese global environmentalism. Further study is needed as to the actual economic benefits of these projects and the distribution of such benefits among different stakeholders.

Environmental. Regional actors, the US, and its allies view environmental issues related to China’s water resource management and the impact of Chinese dams on lower Mekong nations as security issues (Quang & Borton Reference Quang and Borton2023). China has in turn attempted to desecuritize these environmental issues by treating them as technical rather than political matters. Ha (Reference Ha2022) calls this a strategy of “moving issues off the security agenda” and “back into the realm of normal politics.” For example, China has sought to legitimate its dam-building by emphasizing that the dams regulate the river’s water flows and bring about benefits for “drought relief, water supply, navigation and ecology downstream.” Ha (Reference Ha2022) also describes LMC study tours, visits and joint research studies that promote positive messages and shift blame for hydrologic changes from Chinese dams to more general factors like climate change.

China is also affirmatively reframing the environmental impacts of hydropower. China presents its dams as a source of low-carbon, renewable energy and downplays their well-documented ecological impacts – including impacts on sediment flows and water supply. Western environmentalists are almost uniformly opposed to large hydropower and are active in proposing economic and environmental pathways that do not require the construction of dams (see, e.g., Opperman et al. 2023). The LMC/LMEC has not been a forum where the propriety of dam construction is discussed, and it has been criticized for not sufficiently addressing the environmental and social impacts of dam construction. The Mekong River Commission, in contrast, has been more open in studying the negative effects of dams in the basin and has commissioned studies that recommend a moratorium on dam construction on the Mekong mainstream (ICEM 2010).

China has also challenged scientific research related to the dams. A 2019 US State Department-funded study (the “Eyes on Earth study”) concluded, among other things, that Chinese dams were responsible for “severe lack of water in the Lower Mekong during the wet season of 2019.” Brian Eyler, an American expert on China’s dams on the Lancang River at the Stimson Center, put it more starkly, arguing that during the wet season of 2019, although China experienced normal to above average precipitation around its section of the Lancang/Mekong River, “its dams held back more water than ever – even as downstream countries suffered through an unprecedented wet season drought” (Eyler Reference Eyler2020). The study had a major impact on the discourse over China’s actions in the Mekong as a comprehensive technical report with specific negative findings for China that received extensive media coverage and attention from government officials in the US and elsewhere. The MRC and others have criticized the report’s methodology, “arguing that the research did not bear out the conclusions drawn by [Stimson Center commentary on the report and related] media reports” (ICG 2024). The Stimson Center acknowledged errors in the Eyes on Earth study but stood by the original assertions of Chinese dam impact based on new analysis with corrected data (Eyler et al. Reference Eyler2021). Chinese officials and state media, for their part, mounted an aggressive campaign to discredit the study (Shi Reference Shi2020; Hu Reference Hu2022; Hu & Zhao Reference Hu and Zhao2022; ICG 2024).

Chinese authorities have also faced intense criticism for insufficient public consultation with the downstream communities most affected by China’s dams and inadequate information disclosure about dam water management practices. The lack of transparency has caused some to suspect the worst. Ho (Reference Ho2014, p. 8), for example, notes that China’s “unilateral stance” on dam building brought criticism from lower riparian states that China was being “evasive and secretive.” Chinese pledges to disclose more hydrologic data – such as the one Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made at the 3rd Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leader’s Meeting in August 2020 – are a good start (Li Reference Li2020; Shi Reference Shi2020). However, it is worth noting that the pledge was only made in the wake of the Eyes on Earth report and Chinese MFA denials of the truth of that report (Hu & Lin Reference Hu and Lin2020).

To summarize, China has presented the LMC/LMEC as a vehicle for negotiating a win-win developmental and environmental situation in the region. The US has instead treated the LMC/LMEC as a Chinese powerplay with increasingly dire results for the local environment. Regional governments and businesses have been more willing to explore the developmental opportunities associated with dams, whereas local fishing and agricultural communities and environmentalists are more concerned about bearing a disproportionate share of the negative impacts of dams. How Mekong actors respond to China’s overtures in the region are likely influenced by the leverage China holds as their most important trading partner (Johnson & Wongcha-Um Reference Johnson and Wongcha-Um2020), but it will also be affected by the alternatives available to them. Geall (Reference Geall2019) notes that competing Mekong initiatives from Japan, India, Thailand, Australia, and the US “pale in comparison with the scale and speed of China’s expansion down the Mekong.” Given the weakness of alternatives, downstream governments, which have generally been interested in exploiting hydropower (ICG 2024), may choose to engage with China’s offer of development and security benefits, even in the face of serious environmental harms.

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The governments of the developed world have long acted as donors and implementers in the world of international development cooperation. The US, Germany, UK, EU, Japan, and France are among the top contributors these days. China has long been a recipient and beneficiary of aid. We recounted in Section 2 how pro-environmental factions within China built ties with the international community beginning in the 1980s to obtain financial resources, expertise, and capacity support. With the rise of Chinese global environmentalism, China has moved from being a recipient of development support toward being a provider.

China’s environmental development cooperation seems to be motivated by domestic and global reputational concerns, a desire to mitigate environmental risks of Chinese outbound investment and trade, and the goals of demonstrating Chinese global leadership and strengthening diplomatic ties. These cooperative mechanisms signal Chinese commitment to addressing environmental problems that have brought on global criticism and controversy, and they reflect genuine environmental progress at times. However, the sheer scale of Chinese environmental impacts, power imbalances, and indications that these efforts are more greenwashing than genuine substance has led to mixed responses to Chinese development cooperation among relevant audiences.