中文
By Maya Majueran
Lead: China is steering the next phase of the clean‑energy transition, aligning policy and production to deliver solar panels, batteries and greener data centers at scale.
As COP30 gets underway in Belem, Brazil, the world once again turns its attention to the urgent task of confronting climate change. Representatives from more than 190 nations have gathered for two weeks of difficult negotiations, seeking common ground on how to slow the planet's dangerous warming. Whether this latest summit, held from Nov. 10 to 21, will deliver real progress or more promises remains to be seen.
For decades, the narrative of climate action was written in the West. It was a story of lofty goals, diplomatic accords and technologies born in Silicon Valley garages and German engineering labs, often affordable only to well-funded early adopters in high‑income markets.
Over the past 10 years, however, that story has been rewritten, and its new author is China. Driven by a clear and focused industrial strategy, China has rapidly become a global leader in the green transition and clean energy manufacturing, reshaping global energy dynamics. Its rise now offers the world a more accessible and affordable path toward a sustainable future.
The evidence is undeniable. From California to Kenya, the solar panels glinting on rooftops tell the same story: over three-fourths were made in China. This is no mere statistic; it is proof of a meticulously engineered industrial transformation.
By increasing the global supply of affordable solar modules and wind turbines, China has helped bring down renewable energy costs, making solar the world's cheapest source of electricity. This was no accident of the free market but the outcome of a deliberate, long-term commitment: identify a strategic sector, build an unassailable supply chain, and scale until clean energy became affordable for all.
This playbook has now been perfected in the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. While Western automakers were cautious about moving beyond the internal combustion engine, China went all in. The result is striking. China is now the world's largest EV market and exporter, with homegrown champions like BYD already outselling Tesla. Their vehicles are not just lower-priced; they are technologically superior, often featuring sophisticated software and driver-assistance systems that make many Western models feel dated.
This success is supported by China's leading role across the battery supply chain, including the refining of much of the world's lithium and cobalt. As with solar polysilicon, China's extensive refining capacity for key battery minerals underpins the global supply chain.
Now, China is applying this same pragmatic focus to the next frontier: artificial intelligence. A critical issue is the electricity demand from the massive data centers that power AI. Here, too, China is building a remarkable advantage.
Chinese tech giants are pioneering hyper-efficient data centers that significantly outperform their U.S. counterparts in energy efficiency. By leveraging advanced liquid cooling technologies for high-density servers and strategically locating data centers in cooler climates with access to abundant renewable hydroelectric power, China is reducing the colossal carbon footprint of AI.
The focus on "Green AI" could not be more timely, emerging just as the world stands on the threshold of a new AI-driven era. As AI models grow exponentially, the company or nation that can train and run them using the least energy will lead the future of this transformative technology at a lower cost and with greater sustainability.
Over the past decade, China's rapid rise in clean energy manufacturing has prompted a complex mix of reactions across the West, from respect for its efficiency to concern over its growing proportion in the world's total. Western economies initially treated clean technology as a high-value, innovation-driven sector, emphasizing intellectual property and premium markets.
In contrast, China focused on scaling production and building industrial capacity. This difference in approach shifted the global landscape, as China's scale and coordination allowed it to become the central hub of the green economy.
Today, Western nations are reassessing those early assumptions. Many now face the challenge of balancing energy resilience with their climate ambitions while remaining dependent on Chinese-made technologies.
Initiatives such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and Europe's Green Deal Industrial Plan reflect an effort to strengthen domestic supply chains and diversify sources of clean energy components. While such measures may enhance long-term resilience, they also underscore the cost and complexity of rebuilding industrial ecosystems that China has spent years perfecting.
Both the West and China have a shared responsibility and opportunity to work together toward a greener world. Collaboration between the two largest emitters and innovation leaders is essential to accelerating the global energy transition.
While their approaches may differ, their goals ultimately converge on the need to develop cleaner technologies, strengthen supply chains, and make sustainable solutions accessible to all. Constructive engagement between China and the West could transform competition into cooperation, ensuring that the pursuit of climate leadership becomes a collective endeavour rather than a geopolitical contest.
For the Global South, however, China's strategy presents a historic opportunity. Nations long burdened by energy poverty and high fossil fuel import bills now have a viable path forward. Chinese solar panels, wind turbines and, increasingly, lower-priced EVs offer a chance to leapfrog decades of polluting infrastructure. A country can power remote villages with solar microgrids or electrify a national bus fleet at a fraction of earlier cost estimates.
This is not only about climate; it is about development, education, health care and economic opportunity enabled by accessible electricity. From the deserts of Egypt to the growing cities of Southeast Asia, China is supplying the hardware for a development revolution that the West, with its profit-driven model, was unable to deliver at scale.
The world thus stands at a crossroads. China has successfully positioned itself as the indispensable engine of the global green transition. It has democratized access to the tools for a sustainable future, set to bring about a necessary and disruptive acceleration.
The West, in response, must now choose its path wisely. A purely protectionist retreat would be a mistake, ceding global influence and slowing progress. Instead, the goal should be to develop a competitive, multipolar supply chain that enhances global security without dismantling the affordable ecosystem China has built.
The ultimate, and perhaps most challenging, lesson here is to see the need to build a community with a shared future for humanity. China has treated clean energy not as a niche environmental sector but as the core of the next industrial revolution that can serve the best interests of the world as well as those of its own. It has all along placed “its own development in the coordinate system of human development,” seeing that its future is closely connected with that of the rest of the world. As it succeeds, the world is winning.
The transition to a post‑carbon world is now tied to the rise of Chinese technological and industrial strength. The question is no longer whether the world will run on Chinese‑made green tech, but how it will navigate the geopolitical complexity of that reality, as showcased by the U.S. absence at COP30.
The green wave is here, and it was manufactured in China for the world to share while tackling climate change and striving for sustainable development.
Maya Majueran is the founding director of the Belt and Road Initiative Sri Lanka (BRISL), a pioneering organization dedicated to research, dialogue and engagement on China's Belt and Road Initiative.
