Accountability relations and market reform in China’s electric power sector

Abstract

Environmental authoritarianism characterizes China’s energy transition and its renewable energy boost as a top-down process initiated by the centralized developmental state. This article attempts to present a contrary viewpoint and argues that China’s energy transition is a process of repeated integrative bargaining and non-zero-sum games that both the central and sub-national actors play. An examination of the roles of central and provincial governing authorities in market reforms of China’s electric power sector finds that China has embarked on electricity market restructuring by adjusting the accountability relationship between the central and provincial governing authorities. From an actor-centered institutionalist perspective and based on the consideration that central and provincial authorities are institutional constraints of each other, this article studies the capabilities and preferences of central and provincial actors in order to explain their modes of interactions and the resulting policy outcomes. It draws the conclusion that the central and provincial authorities have always shared fluid and dynamic accountability relations. The balance of power is constantly changing with the changes in policy objectives. The transformation of energy governance and particularly the accountability relations in Chinese spatial politics have enabled China to get its market reforms on track in the electric power sector.