This huge energy transition – with the technologies currently standing at 1,408GW – can make a “decisive contribution” to the country’s climate efforts and bring big economic rewards, the China Energy Transformation Outlook 2024 (CETO24) shows.
The report was produced by our research team at the Energy Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research – a “national high-end thinktank” of China’s top planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The outlook looks at two pathways to meeting China’s “dual-carbon” climate goals and its wider aims for economic and social development.
In the first pathway, a challenging geopolitical environment constrains international cooperation.
The second assumes international climate cooperation continues despite broader geopolitical tensions.
We find that, under both scenarios, China’s energy system can achieve net-zero carbon emissions before 2060, paving the way to make Chinese society as a whole carbon neutral before 2060.
However, the outlook shows that meeting these policy goals will not be possible unless China improves its energy efficiency, sustains its electrification efforts and develops a power system built around “intelligent” grids that are predominantly supplied with electricity from solar and wind.
A) state capitalism isn’t a thing. The vast majority of industries are just socialist. They exist without profit motive exclusively for the benefit of the Chinese people. The private sector industries interact with the outside world and make up less than 40% of GDP. It’s why ‘chinas house market collapsing’ has made exactly zero people homeless and has caused exactly zero people to not have a job. The private luxury housing market collapsed, which makes up a tiny fraction of all housing, and mostly just exists for foreign investors.
B) China allows nonessential capitalist markets because capitalism is a required stepping stone of development in industry, and it makes imperialist powers like the US and eu far less invadey if they can make money off you.
C) it’d be great if China’s goal was degrowth but that’s not really fair, and that’s simply not their goal. Their goal is a good life for every citizen, utilizing capitalism to build industries that later become nationalized, unionized, and by extension less wasteful.
The ussr proved you can’t skip the wasteful capitalism stage of development, even if you provide an okay life you’ll eventually get some asshole that sees America’s array of twenty billion brands of cereal with the same ingredients and use that as some flimsy way of saying socialism sucks. That’s why dengism has worked better than the ussrs approach, and why China’s current approach is beating out every other country on growth, increase in quality of life, increase in education rates, while reducing the number of billionaires in society.
Thanks for your perspective, I’m glad there are people like you who feel free to openly articulate in support of it. It’s sad people are downvoting as disagreement, because I can’t imagine them downvoting out of a good faith belief you’re not contributing.
A) When the state owns the company, being “non-profit” is just a matter of accounting. And Uber wasn’t a public service back when they were operating at a loss. The power structure is far more important, and when “the benefit of the Chinese people” is decided top-down through nonrepresentative means, that’s not socialism even if you trust the dictator/oligarchy/overlord/etc. to play nice.
I am genuinely glad your government has given you ample housing, but that doesn’t make your relation less one of being owned and managed. (not to say the west is better, just that China isn’t good enough either).
B&D) The USSR is one nation, and a centrally industrialized dictatorship at that. As a point of scientific process, how are they supposed to have definitively proven wasteful capitalism is necessary as you claim? Even if they genuinely attempted degrowth, that’s just one data point or approach. Different systems that fall under the same bucket can fail or succeed depending on more fine-grained specifics.
Also, the USSR slaughtered millions of small-scale farmers (so-called Kulaks, who happened to largely be Ukrainian) to make way for their industrial megafarms. They were not an example of trying degrowth, they were an example of an industrial centralized dictatorship being embargoed by most of the world.
Your point of not being crushed by the US is well-taken, and maybe Nixon did make an offer China could not refuse at the time. But I think that time has been over for the past 10-20 years. China can defend itself, and even if the military-industrial complex needs mass production to stay on par with the west that does not need to apply to the rest of the economy.
C) Take it from someone who lives in a mature and “prosperous” nation. The fruits of capitalist-style growth suck balls. You’re not giving people a better life by building their industrial/living infastructure wrong initially, you’re taking them away from family and craft and friendship. All things that threaten those in power, by the way
If you have time, look up Marx’ description of societal alienation. He puts it better than I could. And feel free to ask me to look stuff up to.