Green industrial policies in China – the example of solar energy

Abstract

Green industrial policies in China are not necessarily referred to as such. While China has a tradition of industrial policies that goes back to the 1990s, these policies were not always related to environmental, climate mitigation or other ‘green’ issues. Nor, in many cases, are industrial policies that are dedicated to environmental protection or climate mitigation known as green industrial policies, but rather as policies for sustainable development or as elements of the ‘scientific outlook on development’ (⛉Ꮫথᒎ㾖).1 However, a whole chapter concerning the 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP) (2011-2015), which serves as the main framework for all current Chinese industrial policies (Berger et al. 2013), was devoted to China’s ‘green development’ (People’s Congress 2011). Consequently, a recent article summarizing China’s industrial policy trends, which was published in China’s most prominent party organ, the People’s Daily (ேẸ᪥᡹), argued that ‘green has become the major colour of industrial policies’ (Fan 2012). China has also been supportive of the ‘green growth’ concept propagated in the context of the UN Rio+20 Conference in 2012. The Chinese government’s interest in green industrial policies and green growth is driven by several concerns: environmental protection, resource security and technological innovation. Environmental concerns result from the impact of 30 years of reform and the breakneck growth rates of the last decade. Throughout the early decades of reform, the Chinese government prioritized growth over the preservation of natural resources (Fischer 2012b). In recent years, however, the problems and costs arising from this approach have accumulated to such a degree that they are raising questions about China’s past success story of growth and raising doubts about its future development. Indicators of the seriousness of the environmental problems are not only the extremely high levels of air pollution experienced during the winter of 2012/2013, but also the obviously devastating results of China’s calculation of a ‘green GDP’ in 2007 (Steinhardt and Jiang 2007). In addition, analyses by the World Bank and others reveal that China’s economic growth has been accompanied by sharp rises in health costs due to environmental damage (World Bank 2007; Matus et al.