China’s extraordinary economic development since the 1980s came with extreme environmental costs. Air, water and soil pollution – as well as soaring carbon emissions and ecological destruction – were witnessed across the country during these years of rapid development.
Questions to ask as you read
- Does understanding China’s own environmental journey offer a different perspective on “Global China”?
- How do you think Global China will evolve from here? How can Global South countries exercise their agency to shape the direction of this evolution?
In 2014, 81% of coastal waters were classified as “highly contaminated” by China’s State Oceanic Administration. By 2013, Beijing was enduring average air pollution levels that were 17 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines.
The government began to act in the mid-2000s. Today, while pollution is still a major issue across much of the highly industrialised country, environmental governance and low-carbon growth have become top policy priorities.
More than that, in recent years China’s emerging practices in environmental governance have begun to influence “Global China” – from a ban on the construction of new coal power plants overseas, to the promotion of “Nature-based solutions“ and “South-South cooperation“ on renewable energy.
Increasingly, China is bolstering its green credentials in diplomatic fora, such as the UN climate and biodiversity negotiations, while promoting the export of its advanced green technologies.
Any understanding of how Global China impacts the environment must root itself in the history of China’s own environmental awakening. China’s story of environmental governance – from laggard to leader – is of global importance.
In this module, we will explore that history, and then outline the ongoing “greening” and evolution of China’s overseas investments.
Nature-based solutions
Nature-based solutions (NbS) refer to strategies that use natural processes and ecosystems to address societal challenges, such as climate change, water security, biodiversity loss, and disaster risk reduction. By leveraging the capabilities of ecosystems, NbS can offer sustainable alternatives to traditional engineering solutions.
Examples include urban green spaces, reforestation and the restoration of wetlands to mitigate flooding. In China, NbS are characterised by large-scale “eco-developmental” projects that merge natural elements with engineered systems. By integrating nature into infrastructure and urban planning, China aims to address pressing environmental issues while promoting economic growth. This perspective on NbS reflects a broader strategy of sustainable development that values nature as a tool for progress rather than merely a resource to be protected. (The Decoding China Dictionary)
China’s environmental journey
China’s earliest engagement with environmental issues at a global level came in 1972. A delegation formed of officials from multiple ministries, including Qu Geping (known as the “father of Chinese environmental protection”) attended the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.
The following year, China held its first national environmental conference, while the country was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. The early 1980s saw the establishment of a ministry with the environment as a dedicated remit.
However, as China’s boom years of extraordinary economic growth and development took off in the decades after 1978, environmental concerns took a back seat.
Those decades saw countless instances of environmental pollution, including scandals such as pollution “as thick and dark as soy sauce” in the Huai River Basin, the discovery of cadmium-tainted rice, and the destruction of precious grasslands for open-pit coal mining.
In the 2000s, civil society, particularly in the form of local protest, played a fundamental role in bringing environmental pollution to the attention of Chinese leaders and policymakers.
This was evident in the movement against hydropower dams on south-west China’s Nu River, the protests against chemical factories in southern China, and the pushback against air pollution in the country’s urban east.
The period also saw a rise in environmental journalism, citizen science, and activists using the law against polluters.
Study: Air pollution in China
In the 2000s and 2010s, northern China experienced regular, often extreme air pollution. In the winter of 2012, Beijing and its surrounding areas saw what some termed an “airpocalypse”, when air pollution levels reached 30 times the World Health Organization standard, and flights had to be cancelled. Bouts of heavy air pollution were becoming a regular feature of life in northern China.
This public health crisis in northern China triggered significant public debate and even protest. In 2015, prominent journalist Chai Jing released a documentary about air pollution and its health impacts. It received millions of views within a matter of days. A few days later it was censored. Air pollution also became the inspiration for protest art. Further protests about smog took place in other areas of China.
The government began to respond. In 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war against pollution”. There followed a series of ambitious action plans and air quality targets aimed at curbing and regulating coal burning across vast swathes of northern China. The measures had an effect. In the past decade, average pollution concentrations in Beijing and its surrounding areas have fallen significantly – though still not to within the World Health Organization’s standard for healthy air.
That said, evidence is emerging that much of the pollution is shifting west, as polluting industries shut down in heavily regulated eastern China and move to the less regulated, less developed west.
From GDP to Ecological Civilisation
When the Chinese government began to awaken to the environmental problems in the 2000s, laws on environmental, soil, water and air pollution were introduced, and a legal framework on environmental information disclosure was developed.
In the late 2010s, China began to introduce a system of “ecological redlines”, to delineate areas of high ecological value and protect them from development. The process of rolling out environmental laws and effectively implementing them was – and continues to be – a learning process.
Through the 2010s, China also engaged proactively and constructively in international climate negotiations.
After the failures and finger pointing of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, China embarked on rebuilding relationships in the climate diplomacy space.
By 2015, the country was central to the landmark Paris Agreement and its subsequent implementation. In 2020, China announced its domestic decarbonisation targets of peaking emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
The development of environmental policies in China has also been underpinned by a broader ideological framework supporting a balance of environmental protection and economic development.
The term “ecological civilisation” was first used by President Hu Jintao in 2007. However, it has since become more closely associated with Xi Jinping.
The precise definition of “ecological civilisation” remains unclear – and is probably undergoing a process of contestation.
A few things are clear, however. Firstly, the concept views environmental protection and economic and technological development as reconcilable – or perhaps even inseparable.
Secondly, the concept has buy-in from the very highest levels of government, as evidenced by its inclusion in the national constitution in 2018. Lastly, China is keen to advance the concept in its international diplomacy, likely as part of a broader push for soft power and “discourse power”.
The rapid evolution of China’s domestic environmental policies has given rise to differing interpretations of China’s approach to environmental governance.
Some have argued that what we see in China is a form of “environmental authoritarianism”, shaped by top-down political dynamics.
Others have pointed to the often significant role of local stakeholders, including governments, researchers and civil society, in shaping environmental policies to local contexts.
From carbon-intense investments to ‘Green Belt and Road’
How is all of this relevant to China’s engagement with the Global South? Over the past decade, we have seen a similar transformation of Chinese stakeholders’ engagement overseas.
The first five years of the Belt and Road, for example, were shaped by high-carbon and environmentally damaging investments, often with little attention paid to local community concerns.
Since 2021, we have begun to see signs of a shift towards “greener” investments. Gaps and problems remain, however.
Belt and Road 1.0
As we learned in Module 1, one of the drivers behind the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – announced in 2013 – was domestic overcapacity.
In the early years of the initiative, this largely meant Chinese industrial and construction companies seeking new markets overseas. At that time, there were few guidelines, standards or other stipulations about what kind of investments should be sought overseas.
The BRI therefore saw a wave of energy- and carbon-intensive investments, including coal power, oil and gas extraction, and mining.
The energy sector, the largest sector for BRI investments and construction deals in every year since 2013, is a case in point.
Chinese banks and companies became the largest backers of coal power projects in the world, as well as major backers of large-scale hydropower projects.
By 2021, Chinese investment, finance or construction services were behind 103 coal-power plants around the world, representing 104 gigawatts of coal power capacity, according to a study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Additionally, these large-scale power projects, as well as transportation projects, posed major biodiversity risks. In 2020, a study of BRI-related infrastructure in mainland Southeast Asia identified that they crossed through 21 protected areas, half of them protected specifically for their biodiversity.
Belt and Road 2.0
These issues were a source of major grievance from communities and civil society organisations around the world, as we saw with the Lamu coal power plant in Module 1.
It also attracted the attention of many western governments and international agencies concerned with the world’s carbon budget and climate change.
This placed pressure on the Chinese government from multiple angles to better manage the BRI.
From as early as 2017, China began to try to address some of these issues. That year, in the run up to the first Belt and Road Forum, four Chinese ministries (NDRC, MFA, Mofcom and the MEE’s predecessor, the Ministry of Environmental Protection) jointly published “Guidance on Promoting a Green Belt and Road”.
The document linked the promotion of the BRI directly to the concept of “ecological civilisation”, as well as “global environmental governance” and “green development”.
It was vague, however, and only encouraged Chinese companies to “voluntarily obey local environmental protection laws”.
In 2019, in the wake of the second Belt and Road Forum, the Belt and Road International Green Coalition (BRIGC) was established. Tasked with researching the “greening” of the BRI, it released several key reports that have helped to steer Chinese government policy.
Most significantly, in 2020, it released a traffic-light system for ranking the environmental impacts of overseas infrastructure projects. Coal power was classified as “red”, indicating that such projects should not be considered under any circumstances.
The BRIGC’s membership includes Chinese and international government ministries, non-governmental organisations, researchers and academic advisors.
In September 2021, President Xi Jinping made a landmark speech at the UN General Assembly in which he announced 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.”
This marked a major change in China’s approach to governing the BRI, from the relatively laissez-faire approach of BRI 1.0 to a more managed BRI 2.0, in which environmental considerations became central.
Since then, Chinese companies’ support for coal power projects has collapsed, while engagement in renewable projects has begun to rise.
Between summer 2021 and early 2022, China released a series of three “guideline” documents aimed at greening the Belt and Road.
These were pioneered by the MEE and built on much of the research conducted by the partners involved in the BRIGC. Some of the guidelines were jointly issued by more senior ministries, including the NDRC, Mofcom and the MFA.
The three guideline documents provide the most recent outline of China’s vision to “green” the BRI, and contain several key goals:
● Where host country standards are weak, companies investing overseas should adopt international or Chinese environmental standards.
● Pollution and biodiversity should be addressed and negative impacts mitigated.
● Companies should “make a positive contribution” to the climate via low-carbon projects and greener supply chains and procurement.
● The BRI and participating countries should be aligned with and “fully implement” the Paris Agreement on climate change.
● A “Green BRI” should be “basically formed” by 2030.
Though the guidelines are voluntary and none of the ministries involved have developed mechanisms to enforce their stipulations, they do offer important insight into China’s official vision of the “Green BRI”.
That said, for all the momentum towards “greening” overseas investments, polluting projects continue.
The Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, for example, has included the construction of 3,470 megawatts of coal-fired power and been linked to deforestation and numerous reports of pollution and health problems.
Copper mines in Zambia, meanwhile, have seen major pollution episodes and Chinese companies are reportedly still constructing a coal power plant in Zimbabwe. Chinese companies’ engagement in non-coal fossil fuel projects also remains large.
How is Global China evolving?
Along with some of the dynamics we explored in Module 1, the emergence of environmental governance as a major policy focus in China is shaping the evolution of Global China. How Global China is changing is a crucial question for global policymakers, researchers and activists working on development, climate and environmental governance. Below are a few trends that are emerging, all of which require further research and enquiry:
● Investments have seen a shift toward “greener” projects, particularly in the energy sector. In 2022-2023, over 68% of energy generation capacity funded by Chinese entities was either wind or solar power, according to a Boston University study. However, there has also been a drop in the overall numbers of projects supported.
● In recent years, there has also been a trend towards smaller projects. This has in part been driven by changes in finance and risk appetite, and in part by the Chinese government’s push for so-called “small and beautiful” projects, a term that has appeared in high-level documents about the BRI since 2019. Though no formal definition exists, the term is generally understood to mean smaller scale projects that have greater benefits for local communities. Arguably, the precise definition of “small and beautiful” is an area in which BRI countries can exercise their “agency” (see Module 1).
● In 2021, China announced its new Global Development Initiative, which is explicitly tasked with helping to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As with the earliest days of the BRI, the initiative is poorly defined, though the consistency with which the Chinese government refers to it indicates that it is an important new programme.
● The nature of financing on the BRI is changing. Large loans from China’s policy banks are on the decline, while commercial lending and co-financing is taking up a bigger proportion of overseas lending. This will have an impact on the types of projects that get funded, as well as loan repayment conditions.
● New initiatives to instil greater accountability have been launched. For example, in 2022 the Responsible Critical Mineral Initiative and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters (a state-linked industry association) announced a grievance mechanism. It aims to provide a route for communities affected by Chinese mining companies’ operations overseas to raise their issues with the relevant companies.
● There are important emerging conversations on how Chinese finance contributes to global climate finance goals, and how it may contribute to “just transitions”.
● Increasing awareness of biodiversity risks and attempts to promote “nature-based solutions” and “ecological redlines“ overseas.
Summary
China has been on a dramatic environmental journey. From development at all costs, to facing the consequences of extreme pollution at home, China’s domestic environmental governance evolved from minimal to highly sophisticated within a matter of decades.
Overlapping with this domestic development, China’s overseas investments have similarly moved from an adherence to the bare minimum on environmental standards to a vision of a “green” and low-carbon BRI.
This shift was marked by some pivotal moments, such as Xi Jinping’s 2021 announcement to end support for coal power plants overseas.
It has also been backed by a series of “guidance” documents from key government ministries. Many gaps remain, however.
For example, these guidance documents remain voluntary only.
The story of the “greening” of the BRI continues to unfold.
And the evolution of Global China will continue to be shaped by emerging dynamics, such as changes in the nature of finance, the rise of China’s renewables sectors, the emphasis on “small and beautiful” projects, and the grievances, protest and desires of local communities and governments.
Understanding these dynamics will be critical to any stakeholders hoping to influence the direction of travel for Global China.
This post contains content that was first published on Dialogue Earth and republished here under a Creative Commons BY NC ND License. Read the original article.
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