How Xi steers China's green transformation and global climate action
"SOMETHING WE MUST DO OURSELVES"
Balancing economic growth with green development remains a challenge for economies worldwide, especially emerging markets seeking to meet development needs while pursuing environmental sustainability.
In Xi's view, economic growth and the green transition are not opposing forces, but complementary goals. This philosophy is captured in his defining doctrine — "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets."
Achieving China's carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, Xi has stressed, "is not something that others ask us to do, but something we must do ourselves."
Under his leadership, China has effectively aligned emissions reduction with technological innovation, industrial upgrading and energy security, turning the green transition into an increasingly important driver of high-quality development.
As early as 2014, when conventional gasoline-powered vehicles still dominated China's roads, Xi recognized the enormous potential of new energy vehicles. During an inspection tour of SAIC Motor, a major Chinese carmaker, Xi depicted developing NEVs as the only way for China to move from a major automobile country to an automobile powerhouse.
In the following decade, the president has demonstrated consistent support for electric cars, visiting automotive companies, touring laboratories, and showing great interest in trying new home-developed models. China's NEV industry has since grown rapidly, emerging as a flagship of the country's technology-intensive manufacturing sector.
Beyond the NEV sector, China has also built the world's largest and most comprehensive clean energy industrial chain, with green and low-carbon industries emerging as an important engine of economic growth.
The growing exports of the "new three" -- photovoltaic products, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles -- are a testament to China's successful shift toward innovation-driven manufacturing. Beyond its own borders, China is now channeling this green innovation momentum into regional cooperation.
China will continue to work with fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries to increase the installed capacity of photovoltaic and wind power each by 10 million kilowatts, and nurture more green industry talents through China-SCO cooperation, said Xi at the 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO this September.
China's exports of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries this year will help the world to avoid 450 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a recent analysis by the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
The development exemplifies China's strategic push to cultivate "new quality productive forces" -- a policy concept first articulated by Xi in 2023 to drive high-tech innovation and sustainable economic modernization. "Green development," as Xi once put it, "is the defining feature of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are green in nature."
China has turned the challenges of addressing climate change into opportunities for technological innovation, industrial upgrading and high-quality economic development, said Wang Lei, a professor at the School of Government of Beijing Normal University.
"Guided by the goals of reducing carbon emissions and strengthening climate resilience, the country has leveraged policy guidance, market incentives and open innovation to drive the transformation of energy, industry, transportation and construction," he added.
