China’s Low-carbon Energy Relations With Emerging Markets (a Multi-level Perspective)

This book explores China’s contemporary energy relations with emerging markets.Through the prisms of global low-carbon transition and power sector development, Ryan McLean utilises the multi-level perspective to build upon existing understandings of the Chinese renewables ‘revolution’ from a top-down interpretation.

This book explores China’s contemporary energy relations with emerging markets.

Through the prisms of global low-carbon transition and power sector development, Ryan McLean utilises the multi-level perspective to build upon existing understandings of the Chinese renewables ‘revolution’ from a top-down interpretation. McLean presents an in-depth analysis of the external ramifications of China’s solar and wind dominance across the Global South in the areas of green technological trade, project construction, and regime financing. This research provides a convincing explanation for why Chinese coal incumbents have been proactive overseas in spite of the country’s clean energy dominance and Beijing’s climate commitments. Finally, the book argues that China’s low-carbon prowess has longer-term significance for the Global South, and in addition contributes to the rising debates over the geopolitics of renewable transition in a complex, multipolar world.

This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese energy policy and foreign relations, energy markets in the Global South, international politics, and the wider global energy transition field.

Introduction 1 China and the International Political Economy of Energy Transition: Present Debates, Future Trends 2 The Multi-Level Perspective and Socio-technical Transition: A China-Global South Framework 3 Chinese Renewable Industrialisation: Domestic-International Ramifications 4 A Sino-Global Green Realignment? The Diffusion of Solar and Wind Energy in Emerging Markets 5 Chinese Regime-Level Involvements: State-Led and Multilateral Financing in the Developing World 6 The Yin and Yang of Sino-Global South Energy Relations: Coal Power Incumbents in an Era of Transition 7 The Geopolitical Dimensions of Beijing’s Green Energy Dominance: Cooperation and Conflict in a Multipolar World Conclusion Appendix: Interviews

Ryan McLean is an assistant professor at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon. His research interests are situated in the fields of contemporary Chinese energy policy and energy relations, Chinese political economy, and the global political economy of socio-technical energy transition.