Introduction
On June 1st, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; the same agreement that had been “a turning point” for climate change and the global climate regime. Half a year later, on January 22nd, 2018, President Trump, following his protectionist agenda, set to put a tariff on solar panels, increasing the cost of solar power in the United States. The tariff is meant to protect domestic industry, but it could also hurt Chinese producers, who have been selling their solar panels to the United States. President’s Trump anti-climate change agenda has demonstrated a step backwards in advances for renewable energy, but China has come to the rescue. Since the early 2000s, China has gained traction in developing its Renewable Energy (RE) sector, especially in developing solar and wind power technologies. China’s economy largely depends on coal, but recently it has become a global leader in renewable energies, and is in a path towards transitioning away from coal. In 2013, China installed more “renewable energy capacity than all of Europe and the rest of the Asia Pacific region,” demonstrating its ability to compete with the world in renewable energy. The United States having backed down from its environmental commitments has become an opportunity for China to prove it can be a leader in renewable energy, which has also come to symbolizes China’s growing ‘soft power’. Therefore, this essay will define and describe what Joseph S. Nye defines as ‘soft power’ in the 1990s, and more importantly to relate it to China’s growth in its renewable energy sector as an expression of its soft power. It will then analyze the environmental, economic, domestic and international political reasons for China’s growth in Renewable Energy sector. Lastly, it will discuss the growing importance of China as a representative of the Global South, and how China’s growth in Renewable Energy and its active participation in international negotiations is an example of China’s growing ‘soft power’, especially in a period of retreat by the United States.
Review of literature
In the autumn of 1990, Joseph S. Nye argued that power and power relations were changing in the world. Nye defines power as the “ability to do things and control others, to get others to do what they otherwise would not.” He further emphasizes how politicians and diplomats have come to see power as being associated with the possession of certain resources or conditions, such as “population, territory, natural resources, economic size, military forces, and political stability.” Nye’s analysis comes at the end of the Cold War and in a period in which the power dynamics of the world were changing after the fall of the Soviet Union. At the time, Nye argued that power could no longer mean military force as it had been defined for eras. Instead, Nye proposes another side to power, which he defines as ‘soft power’. Soft power came to symbolize power in terms of advances in “technology, education, and economic growth.” Furthermore, soft power has to do with “intangible power resources such as culture, ideology and institutions.” Soft power therefore became related to the ability to influence others by attraction or persuasion rather than by coercion, or hard power. Hence, for Nye, power exists in a spectrum, having hard, coercive power on one end and soft, co-optative power on the other.
Later, in 2012, Nye delivered a speech at the University of Beijing; he recognized that it would be foolish not to recognize “the important gains” that China was making in the realm of soft power. Although it was not at the same level as the United States or other European countries, it had made major advances. Yet, as Alan Hunter argues, soft power in the context of Asia is a relatively new thing with the rise of China. Instead, Hunter argues that the only attempt to situate Chinese soft power has been by Joshua Kurlantzick, in his book, “Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is transforming the World.” Kurlantzick’s argument is that “Even if China’s technology lags behind that of American or Japanese or European competitors, some poorer nations think that Chinese companies will be more willing to share what they know, and that Chinese firms, with backgrounds in the developing world, might be better suited for [helping] Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia.” Furthermore, Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig have coined a new term, ‘sharp power’, which describes Russia’s and China’s attempt to “shape public perceptions and behavior around the world.” Yet, this type of power involves “deceptive use of information for hostile purposes” which Nye would argue accounts for a type of hard power. Furthermore, Nye argues that there is a fine line between soft and sharp power, and soft power can cross the line into coercion when the “framing [of information] shades into deception.” More importantly, it seems as though China, as a growing power, has tried to increase its influence through the world, not only through the use of soft power, but also through creating a deceptive image of itself to the rest of the world. In the following sections, the reasons behind China’s renewable energy growth will be analyzed in relation to China’s soft power.
Environmental and Economical Reasons
In 2006, China became the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). These emissions mostly come from energy use. China has also become the worlds’ largest energy consumer. China’s economic growth has been largely fuelled by coal, and it has been its economic growth that has led China to become an emerging global power. Furthermore, it has also become highly dependent on oil. Yet, China has “no real strategic oil reserve, and its own domestic oil and gas production continues to decline.” This means that China has come to depend on oil from other countries. 70% of its oil use is imported from countries such as Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. Yet, recently China has come to realize that in order to continue its economic growth it has to plan to have energy security, and to become less dependent on the import of oil. Therefore, China has been rapidly diversifying its sources of energy domestically to ensure energy security, which translates to its increase in renewable energy technologies. This growth in renewable energy indicates that China wants to depend less on the outside world for energy sources and technology, and have dependable energy security. On the other hand, economically, China does not want to be in a disadvantaged position with relation to the United States. China plans on competing with the United States’ oil and gas by producing renewable energy that other countries can afford, while also helping them reduce their GHGs emissions in the process. As of 2013, China had already installed more renewable energy than all of Europe, and it also became the largest investor in the development of renewable energy.
Environmentally, Espen Moe argues that China is and will be one of the countries most affected by climate change. Hunter argues that the continuous population growth will continue to put pressure on Chinese resources, and therefore, China has to find a way to effectively manage its resources. The smog in Beijing in 2011 was a “locally inescapable, internationally visible exclamation on the escalating spillovers from China’s coal-fired, export-driven growth path.” Alongside other climate related problems, these instances have demonstrated rising pressure on the government to address the challenge of climate change. Hence, China has to find ways to effectively handle its resources “because [resource] shortages could threaten the future of the country,” the economy, but arguably, and more importantly the future of the Communist Party. Therefore, renewable energies have become China’s solution to its growing pressures on energy security and on its growing environmental challenges. Moe argues that it has “become clearer that renewable energy is also seen as part of an air pollution, green industry and technology development, energy intensity and carbon emissions strategy” which seems to indicate that China’s ‘Renewable’ Revolution is only beginning.
Political Reasons
Domestically, the Chinese government has increasingly had to deal with the frequent clouds of smog that cover urban cities. According to Tom Harrison and Genia Kostka, in 2005 there were more than 51,000 pollution related protests, due to the increasing social unrest related to the increasing amount of pollution-related health problems. Yet, domestically, the Communist Party of China, has had to face many other issues, “including the need to increase employment, reduce the urban-rural income gap, reform rural land ownership, and improve the provision of affordable housing and health care services” but its main priority has been to avoid any situations that could be politically destabilizing. More importantly, in order for the Communist Party to provide such things as political stability, it needs to continue its economic growth while at the same time ensuring that pollution and health related problems do not contribute to the destabilization the party. Hence, it has had to manage climate change in a way that does not threaten the future of the party, while at the same time preventing instances of social unrest.
International politics is at the heart of the Chinese attempt to improve its sources of energy. For further understanding China’s rise in the international arena, it is important to understand that China’s power is not coming from its available and abundant resources. Instead, China’s soft power is expressed in its desire to be a leading and “natural leader of the developing world” through diplomacy, its continuous economic growth, cultural exchanges and other forms such as aid and investment, but also through its increasing participation in international climate negotiations. Gang Chen argues that China’s “international cooperation against climate change has proved to be a diplomatic success, winning applause from both developing countries and developed countries.” Chen argues that how “China understands its image will be greatly damaged if its own emissions continue to grow.” This helps emphasize China’s dependence on building a reputation on a global scale to help legitimize its own power.
It also seems as though China wants to drift away from the United States and to create its own sphere of influence, which will be interesting to see happen under the Trump administration and how the United States will respond to China’s growing influence. If China succeeds in implementing its renewable energy strategy, it could create a renewable energy market to the Global South, therefore being in direct competition with the United States and even replacing the United States in “many regional alliances and trading relationships.” More importantly, and adding to the China’s growing soft power, its “domestic concerns for climate stability have reinforced international pressure” for China to play an ambitious role in combating climate change. Reputation is very important, China wants to prove that it can be a leader, and by taking on a renewable energy revolution, it has an opportunity to develop its own influence and soft power.
The Global South
Although China’s reputation as a leader of the Global South has been increasing, there have been instances in which it has not been well received. For example, because China has long depended on foreign sources of oil to fuel its domestic growth, as it turns to more renewable sources it could come to depend less on the Global South’s oil. This could be damaging to these countries since they are fragile states and depend on their oil exports, and a sudden Chinese back down from oil would be catastrophic to these countries economies. On the other hand, it has also faced challenges by local criticism that its “resource-focused activities replicate the pattern of neo-imperialist domination which characterized earlier European intervention.” Yet, China has proved to be an emerging power of the Global South. In terms of renewable energy and development, China’s provide countries the Global South with clean energy as a way of “help[ing] other countries avoid…environmental mistakes.” Furthermore, as a soft power strategy, China plans on assisting other countries develop green business models and having more access to green energy and modern infrastructure. Through its own experience as a developing country, and by helping these countries develop their renewable energy technologies, China also plans on helping these countries reduce inequalities and “to create more consistent global economic growth.”
Conclusion
Chen argues that “China has not enough hard power to coerce other developing countries to compromise on the climate issue,” hence, China has tried to develop its soft power as a way of building a reputation to seem as a legitimate power for the Global South while at the same time providing aid and investment to help these countries develop. Furthermore, Kejun Jiang and Xiulian Hu emphasize how China has come to rely on its domestic market, to continue its economic growth, while at the same time opening up its economy to the global market. Yet, and it is important to make this point, all of this serves to build China’s soft power. Through building a strong renewable energy sector that could supply energy to the Global South, China wants to compete with the United States’ oil, coal and natural gas exports. As Robert O. Keohane and Michael Oppenheimer argue, the rise of solar panels in China could either be because of their concern with climate change or because of the industrial opportunities “arising from global action.” Both of these reasons play into China’s renewable energy growth, but the industrial opportunities renewable energy presents, could be exploited by China as President Trump further demonstrates his support for coal, oil and natural gases. This could eventually “pave the way for China to become the renewable energy superpower of the future.” Going back to Nye, China’s growth in the renewable energy technology demonstrates its ability to develop its ‘soft power’ and more importantly its ability to become a leader for the Global South. Although there is an array of reasons behind China’s development of renewable energy, this essay has tried to highlight the fact that China wants to improve its reputation internationally and also to compete with the United States through building its soft power through its strategic technological advances.