China’s Climate- and Energy-security Dilemma: Shaping a New Path of Economic Growth

Karl Hallding (), Guoyi Han () and Marie Olsson ()

Journal of Current Chinese Affairs - China aktuell, 2009, vol. 38, issue 3, 119-134

Abstract: China is undergoing modernization at a scale and speed the world has never witnessed. As climate change increasingly dominates the global agenda, China faces the challenge of shaping a new growth path in a climate-constrained world. The paper argues that China’s current climate and energy policy is, at best, a “repackaging” of existing energy and environmental strategies with co-benefits for the mitigation of climate change. Nevertheless, even though policies are not climate-change driven, the quick (rhetorical) endorsement of low-carbon development and the strong momentum of green technologies indicate that political ambitions are in favour of finding a more sustainable development pathway. A new growth path would, however, require a fundamental shift, with development and energy strategies being set within climate security constraints. The eventual success of this new path remains uncertain.

Keywords: Climate change; Sustainable development; Economic growth; Climate protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/63/63 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:chaktu:v:38:y:2009:i:3:p:119-134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/china-aktuell

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Current Chinese Affairs - China aktuell from Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Karsten Giese () and Heike Holbig ().