China’s Green Development Is Both Anti-Imperialist and Socialist

By A. Shantha – Feb 18, 2026

China has become the global vanguard of green industrial development. National sovereignty has been a major consideration in this green push. And it wouldn’t be possible without governing capital.

Since the turn of the century, China has been undergoing its own green industrial revolution. In 2023, China was responsible for the production of over 80% of the world’s solar panels and 60% of the world’s electric vehicles.1 China’s domestic New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) — referring to battery/pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and fuel-cell electric vehicles (of which pure electric vehicles are now the most common) — make up more than 90% of sales, compared to the 50% market share held by gas-powered Chinese-branded vehicles.2 In the first half of 2025, China’s increase in renewable energy generation exceeded that of all other countries combined, with solar power in China accounting for 55% of the global increase in solar output, and wind power in China accounting for 82% of the global increase in wind power output.3

In our era of exponential ecological decline and potential collapse, why hasn’t the Western world — supposedly the vanguard of capitalist ‘innovation’ — been able to make even meagre progress on this question?

How is it that the political and economic system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the one decisive in producing such world-changing outcomes?

The brief answers to these questions lie, first, in the fact that sovereignty — that is, resistance against capitalism’s tendency toward uneven development on a world scale — was a primary factor in pursuing this green development trajectory. And, second, that the pursuit of this sovereign development trajectory within a hostile imperialist world-system was only internally possible through the subordination and disciplining of capital to wider social objectives set out by China’s developmental state led by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Sovereignty within the Capitalist World-System
The history of capitalist development is one of imposing — via imperialism — uneven development wherein core economies accumulate capital by draining wealth from imperial peripheries (exemplified by Britain’s extraction from India) producing stark disparities in productive capacity.4 In response to this, peripheral states pursue combined development to resist this dynamic, historically by mobilizing the state to build domestic industry and reclaim sovereign productive capacities. While combined development initially took capitalist forms as countries like the US and Germany used their state for infant industry development, this struggle to wrest productive capacity away from the polarizing tendency of capitalism increasingly adopted socialist forms after 1917 — most notably with the Russian and Chinese revolutions.5 What is clear from this is that the nature of combined development is closely linked to the question of national sovereignty, and that the (developmental) state has historically been used in pursuit of those two goals.

Upon founding the PRC in 1949, the CPC confronted a series of challenges: a distorted economy shaped over a century by foreign aggression, a US-led trade embargo, American aggression on its northeastern flank in Korea, and acute industrial underdevelopment. Thus, industrialization and sovereignty became intertwined priorities.

Nearly eight decades after the establishment of the PRC, it is clear that the state and the Communist Party continue to prioritize the mutually reinforcing imperatives of industrialization and sovereignty. Many point to the unleashing of the capital relation by reforms following 1978 as the definitive driver of Chinese industrialization.6 This is certainly true but the achievements of the post-1978 period are directly predicated on the developmental strides made between 1949 and 1976 (the ‘Mao period’) — namely the eradication of feudalism via land reform, human capital investment via education and welfare, and import-substitution industrialization.7

Through the pre- and post-reform development strategies, national sovereignty against imperialism has remained a core objective of the state throughout. This logic — of industry serving the goal of national sovereignty — continues to be apparent in the development of China’s green industries (in this article, NEVs and renewables).

The State-Led Development of China’s Green Industries
How did China mobilize the state to create the success of the NEV and renewable energy sectors?

In both these sectors, the state played an active role in:

• strategic and long-term national planning;
• the construction of markets (including both stimulating demand, and also fostering the development of the supply chain);
• steering and disciplining markets;
• knowledge production; and
• technological upgrading.

The Chinese state does not only include the central government — even though it plays a major role in the development of a given industry — but also provincial and local governments who are chiefly responsible for the implementation of nationally-set policies, and whose officials must — alongside this — balance the considerations of their own respective constituencies, including local firms and workers.8 This means that the state-led development of China’s green industries is the result of complex interactions between different levels of government.

China’s NEV Sector
China’s NEV sector is the product of over 20 years of strategic, long-sighted planning.

• 2001-2005: The 10th Five-Year Plan launched the “863 Program,” allocating 2 billion RMB for NEV research and development (R&D) by manufacturers, universities, and research institutes.9
• 2010: NEVs were designated a strategic emerging industry
• 2012: ‘Energy-Saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan’;
◦ The prioritization of pure electric drive technology (as opposed to that of hybrid vehicles) and introduction of purchase subsidies;
◦ Stricter emission standards for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles; and
◦ Charging infrastructure mandates.10
• 2015: “Made in China 2025” strategy identified NEVs as one of ten high-tech manufacturing sectors that China aims to promote as a ‘dominant global player’, focusing on:
◦ Low-carbon electrification;
◦ Digitization; and
◦ Autonomous driving.11

More recent advances in the NEV sector are undoubtedly built on the foundations laid by the 1994 Automotive Industry Policy, which leveraged China’s massive market access to secure technology transfer from foreign automotive companies via joint ventures (JVs) with state-owned firms.12 This 1994 policy also gradually introduced more stringent local content requirements (i.e. government-mandated requirements that a certain percentage of inputs are locally derived), thus allowing the automotive supply chain in China to proliferate and modernize.13 The combination of these two factors — technology transfer and the shaping up of the automotive supply chain — allowed the emergence of indigenous automakers (like Chery) in the domestic market by 2004.

However, given the continued dominance of foreign auto brands (such as Volkswagen and General Motors) due to their name brand recognition, one of the few ways domestic auto firms would be able to compete would actually be to “leapfrog” into NEVs to bypass the ICE dominance of foreign auto firms.14 And given state policy and the market signals it produced, these domestic auto firms were well predisposed to doing so.

State intervention operated on both the supply and demand sides of the market. Supply-side support included:

• An estimated US$25 billion in R&D subsidies between 2009–2023; as well as
• Local municipal subsidies covering 30% of charging station construction costs in Shenzhen and Suzhou (2014–2015).15

Demand-side measures featured:

• The “Ten Cities, Thousand Vehicles” program (2009) for public fleet procurement (later expanded to 25 cities);
• Consumer subsidies up to 60,000 RMB per purchase of a pure EV (between 2010–2020).16
• The granting of preferential license plates, preferential road access, and free parking for NEVs in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.17

In addition to supply- and demand-side supports from the state (in different forms of subsidies), the NEV sector has also developed qualitatively due to state policy that fosters innovation and technological upgrading.

Beyond just R&D subsidies, consumer subsidies for NEV purchases were made to vary by the driving range of different NEVs (i.e. how many kilometers can be travelled on one full charge of battery). Higher driving range vehicles were subsidized to a greater extent than lower range vehicles, and from 2014 onward, each year saw a progressive reduction in subsidies; this catalyzed automakers to innovate and engage in technological upgrading to maximize their production of NEVs that would receive the greatest subsidies.18

After progressively reducing national subsidies over the years, by 2020, purchase subsidies were replaced by a dual-credit policy requiring automakers to offset ICE emissions with NEV production credits — that is, the policy essentially regulated that a certain proportion of NEVs (relative to ICE vehicles) must be maintained by automakers in the Chinese market. Foreign firms — typically laggards in NEV output — were required to purchase credits from Chinese firms or form JVs, effectively transferring the burden of subsidizing the sector away from the state and toward foreign competitors, all while enabling further technology transfer.19

Innovation was further spurred by the “catfish effect” of Tesla’s inclusion and initial dominance in the market and a shift toward “manufacturing + service” models integrating smart driving technologies, thus also attracting tech capital.20

As a result of these developmental state policies, the NEV sector grew from a market penetration rate of just over 1% in 2015 to just under 26% in 2022, reaching the central government’s target for 2025 three years early.21

China’s Renewables Sector
Just like the NEV sector, China’s renewables sector was a product of long-term planning and sustained developmental state coordination. The 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010) designated wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies as strategic industries, complemented by the Renewable Energy Law of 2006 establishing four mechanisms:

• National renewable targets;
• Mandatory grid connection and purchase of renewable power (whereby grid companies — that are largely state-owned — are obligated to guarantee a market for power generation companies producing renewable energy, which are also largely state-owned);
• Feed-in tariffs (whereby grid companies pay an above-market rate to power companies); and
• A cost-sharing mechanism (charged on end-users of electricity), including a specific fund for renewable energy development.22

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) coordinates sector development, leveraging state dominance in power generation and grid operations —primarily through state-owned enterprises (SOEs) —while private firms concentrate in manufacturing and innovation.23 In this way, private actors are being made to serve the state sector, at the same time as pursuing opportunities for profit. SOEs face binding renewable capacity quotas with penalties for non-compliance, allowing the state to steer sectoral development in a given direction.

The state also played an important role in forging connections with academia and research institutes for knowledge production in the renewable energy sector. For example, the NDRC collaborated with research institutions, such as the China Association for Science and Technology and Jiangsu’s provincial Energy Research Society, to draft energy conservation strategies and execute technology projects.24

Wind power scaled rapidly after the 2002 National Wind Concession Program introduced competitive bidding for the construction of larger-scale farms, which were largely being approved by local governments through the 2000s.25 Critical to the development of a domestic supply chain of wind power manufacturing equipment were a 70% local content requirement (from 2004) and a 17% import tariff on preassembled turbines (from 2007), which spurred technology transfer. For example, Chinese wind power heavyweight Goldwind licensed designs from German firms Jacobs, RE Power, and Vensys.26 Further, bidding criteria evolved from simply ‘lowest price wins’ to progressively account for domestic manufacturing content and technical capability.27 Thus, overall, local content policies, technology transfer, protective tariffs, and the growing stringency and sophistication of bidding requirements allowed the domestic supply chain for wind power equipment to more fully take shape in China during the 2000s, allowing Chinese wind power companies to “[move] quickly up the technological ladder, [win] local market share and, as the sector matured, [strengthen] global competitiveness”.28

Solar development initially differed from the trajectory of wind power development: pre-2009 growth was export-driven (delivering to markets in the global North, primarily Europe), privately-led, and minimally state-supported.29 From 2006, firms purchased turnkey production lines to scale manufacturing, while over 60% of solar company executives in China had studied or worked abroad, facilitating North-to-South knowledge transfer in the sector.30 The 2008–09 financial crisis and subsequent 2011 EU/US ‘anti-dumping’ probes triggered a pivot to the Chinese domestic market, given the collapse of Northern markets where PV cells were traditionally being sold. In 2011, a feed-in tariff catalyzed a 500% surge in PV cell installations that year; growth accelerated further after 2013 when local governments gained approval authority for solar projects.31

These coordinated policies yielded dramatic results: by 2025, China accounted for 55% of global solar power growth and 82% of wind power expansion, cementing its renewable energy leadership through developmental state orchestration of markets, technology transfer, and industrial upgrading.32

Green Industrialization, Sovereignty, and Socialism
China’s green development is both anti-imperialist and socialist. Let us first look at how it is anti-imperialist. It is anti-imperialist in two ways — in its pursuit of 1) energy sovereignty and 2) technological sovereignty.

Energy Sovereignty
The Chinese government views the development of green industries as an important part of guaranteeing national energy sovereignty and security — these connections are explicitly made in state documents.33

Though coal still accounts for approximately 54% of China’s energy consumption, it has come with less-than-desirable consequences, including severe air pollution, which only recently has been reducing. The primary alternative to coal (discounting renewables for now) has been oil and gas, which — though only making up about 27% of China’s total energy consumption — sees an external procurement rate of 72%.34 This means that 72% of oil consumed in China is imported from abroad, amounting to a notable energy vulnerability. In 2015, around 80% of China’s oil consumption was used by vehicles.35

Given that coal-based development causes serious ecological damage, and an extensive reliance on foreign-imported oil and gas poses energy security vulnerabilities, it was squarely in the interest of China’s national energy sovereignty that the state rapidly develop and scale up both the renewable energy sector as well as the NEV sector. Today, China’s energy self-sufficiency rate stands at about 85%, reflecting a deliberate shift away from ecologically damaging coal and geopolitically vulnerable fossil fuel imports.36

China’s growing energy sovereignty means that it has deprived Western imperialism of a crucial point of leverage in determining China’s developmental trajectory. In other words, access to energy is decreasingly a means through which the West can attempt to de-develop China, as it does with the rest of the global South by linking the US dollar to oil purchases, therefore constraining the fiscal space of many governments across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Samir Amin listed ‘Five Monopolies of the Center’ which are, briefly put, responsible for the continued underdevelopment of the South and overdevelopment of the North, the third of which is the global North’s ‘monopolistic access to the planet’s natural resources’ — that is, the North’s monopolistic access to the earth’s energy resources.37 China’s energy sovereignty directly undermines this monopoly, thus structurally threatening capitalist-imperialism’s drive toward uneven development at a world scale.

Technological Sovereignty
Beyond energy sovereignty, China’s green development prioritized technological sovereignty by indigenizing production.

China’s developmental state actively shaped end-to-end domestic supply chains through local content requirements, JVs (facilitating technology transfer), extensive R&D funding, and the strategic and dynamic use of subsidies. China’s NEV sector, for instance, produced a “self-sufficient and controllable supply chain, without any chokepoints in the supply of critical components that could be constrained by other countries.”38

Crucial to indigenizing production is indigenizing production technologies. This emphasis on indigenizing production is referred to by Chu Wan-wen as the ‘catch-up consensus’ — that is, that production in China should strive to catch up with that of the global North and that it should be indigenized.39 Meng Jie & Zhang Zebin argue that this catch-up consensus is in fact the ‘core of the CPC’s ideology’:

Lu Feng [Emeritus Professor of Economics and former Deputy Dean at Peking University’s National School of Development] has pointed out a deeply rooted political correctness in China about the need for technology to be primarily developed independently in order to be regarded as an outstanding achievement. This stems from the fact that the CPC relied on the popular demand for independence to seize power, and that political independence was a pre-condition for establishing China’s industrial system. Therefore, whenever industrial development faces fundamental strategic choices, the CPC’s ideology will guide policies back toward independence.40

This once again reinforces that, for the CPC, industrialization (and the technological indigenization implied therein) and national sovereignty were dual imperatives intertwined with one another since the establishment of the PRC in 1949 continuing until today. China’s technological sovereignty undermines the global North’s monopoly over advanced technologies, therefore also undermining the structure of capitalist-imperialism by resisting its world-systemic drive toward uneven development.41

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Socialist-Oriented Green Development
China’s green industrialization — with sovereignty as a central consideration — depends to a high degree on its ability to ‘govern capital’, both foreign and domestic. In both the NEV and renewables sectors, capital was made to serve national goals set by the government through a combination of carrots and sticks.

It would be incorrect to identify the use of a market economy in China’s developmental trajectory and reductively equate it with (state) capitalism. Put simply, capitalism is the rule of capital — both in particular countries and at a world scale. In a capitalist system, social objectives (such as creating entirely new green industries of the future or reversing severe air pollution via automobile electrification) are subordinated to private capital accumulation. In China’s system, the opposite is true — capital accumulation is subordinated to broader social objectives. This is characteristic of how the CPC understands its own economic system: as a ‘socialist market economy’. As part of this socialist market economy, the commanding heights of the economy (finance, telecommunications, public utilities, infrastructure, etc.) remain in the hands of the state and thus can be steered in favour of social objectives. For China’s Party-State, there is a particular logic in governing capital — this is encapsulated in Meng & Zhang’s concept of ‘constructive markets’:

Constructive markets in the socialist market economy have two main characteristics. First, the state assumes the task of constructing markets on both the supply and demand sides, often acting as a special agent embedded in the market in various ways to continuously guide market development and coordinate the division of labour. Second, the state’s development strategy introduces a use value goal into the market which interacts with the exchange value objectives pursued by enterprises, placing the former in a relatively dominant position.42

The Chinese developmental state governs capital by constraining enterprises’ ‘exchange value objectives’ — the profit motive — within a broader framework of national developmental goals based on ‘use value’. This is largely by using regulatory tools. Foreign automakers were required to form JVs with domestic firms (capped at 50% foreign ownership) to access China’s vast market, facilitating technology transfer. Later, the dual-credit policy disciplined laggard foreign firms into potentially subsidizing domestic NEV producers or forming new JVs to offset negative credits.43 Similarly, the 70% local content requirements and 17% tariffs on imported wind turbines placed constraints on capital that forced it to pursue technological upgrading.44

Therefore, an internal socialist orientation — one that subordinates capital to broader ecologically sustainable and people-centered social objectives — is actually what enables a sovereign development path in China that is able to resist capitalist-imperialism’s drive toward uneven development.

Concluding Remarks
We are currently in a transition from capitalism towards socialism.45 Relatedly, Marx wrote:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or . . . with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.46

Our current moment of global capitalist crisis and decay is exactly resonant with Marx’s description of the conflict between capitalist social relations and our societies’ productive forces. Capitalist social relations are currently acting as a fetter on — or blocking — the further development of the productive forces in such a direction that can even begin to address the central crisis of our time: capitalist-induced ecological breakdown. It is precisely for this reason that the Western capitalist powers have been unable to innovate and sufficiently scale up green technologies to meet the needs of our moment.

Instead, it is China — whose social revolution (gestured at in the Marx quote) is ongoing — that has begun to break capitalist-imperialism’s polarizing dynamic and, in this context, has been able to innovate, scale up, and widely adopt new green productive forces.47

This green revolution initiated by China has major global significance given that — through its investments in R&D and technological upgrading — China has now done the heavy lifting of developing the cutting-edge of green technologies that now no longer have to be ‘discovered,’ but can instead now (in most cases) be engaged with commercially or through other forms of economic cooperation between countries. Also the rapid development of China’s solar industry and the corresponding magnitude of its productive output have driven the cost of PVs down globally.48 These have major implications for other global South countries looking to pursue alternative development paths that are both ecologically sustainable and that do not further indebt them.

While Western capitalism’s drive toward uneven development — necessarily involving the absolute cheapening, wasting, and violent destruction of human lives and the natural environment — is what has caused ecological breakdown in the first instance, it is likely no coincidence that socialist China is at the vanguard of developing the prerequisites for a sustainable, ecological civilization that has major positive implications for the rest of humanity and the planet.

(Substack)

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