3 Reasons China Wants Green Leadership And 2 Reasons It Doesn't

China's traditional markets, Europe and the US have recently added trade barriers, including tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels. At Cop30, China used global climate negotiations to set out its opposition to these barriers, positioning free trade in clean technologies as essential for reaching global climate goals. But they are also ideal for Chinese economic growth.

Shipping to other emerging markets is an alternative to these more established markets. China's EVs exports to south-east Asia saw an explosive growth in 2025. Its new customers are large, energy-intensive economies, such as Indonesia and India. China wants to keep them and everybody else committed to net-zero emissions in order to maximize its clean-tech trade benefits.

China also wants to strengthen cooperation across developing countries. Shared trade interests are only one driver of climate action alignment between competing economies, such as between China and India at the recent summit. Regional security is another.

China hopes to increase its political power in countries and regions of strategic interest, such as via its economic and trade partnership the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the Pacific, it has already increased its investments in new security allies, such the Solomon Islands and Cook Islands, competing in the region with the US, Australia and New Zealand. To repackage this strategy under the name of climate change, China launched the China-Pacific Island Countries Climate Change Cooperation Center in 2022. Addressing global climate change enables China to legitimise its involvement in these countries and regions.

But assuming full leadership and historical responsibilities for climate change would be beyond China's comfort zone.

China's delegates entered Cop30 meeting rooms being praised for new leadership, but Beijing is struggling to meet its current pledges. The latest analysis suggests that its carbon emissions are falling slowly. The country's emission reduction pledges, announced ahead of Cop30, are regarded as insufficient. The biggest threat is its own economy: weak factory output, low consumer spending, high youth unemployment and lower state taxation to encourage growth.

Local governments in China have difficulties in financing the low-carbon economy. Local government debts are accumulating. It's not clear whether China can fulfil its pledges by cutting emissions sharply, continue to subsidise its green energy industries, and make significant economic investments in regional cooperation, all under its current weak economy.

So China does not want to lead as an advocate of deep emission cuts. Nor does it want to take on the mantle with other industrialised economies of accepting the historical responsibility for global climate change.

Analysis has shown that, although they're far lower than those of the United States, China's historical emissions since 1850 have overtaken those from the 27 EU member states. The closer China comes to the traditional US role, the more it will be expected to take historical responsibility for climate change. China is not ready for that. It cannot reduce emissions significantly in a short timeframe under a weak economy.

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China sees itself as a developing country. At Cop30, one of the contentious issues was getting US$1.3 trillion per year in climate finance from public and private sources in the EU and other OECD economies.

China did not formally commit to supporting the US$1.3 trillion goal, disappointing the rest of the developing world. The lack of commitment was not just a matter of money, but the idea that China should be held responsible in the same terms as developed countries. China has provided a substantial amount of climate and clean energy finance to other developing countries, but this is primarily driven by its strategic and geopolitical considerations.

China also opposed the fossil fuel roadmap aimed at phasing out fossil fuels and declined to contribute to Brazil's Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a mechanism for compensating countries for preserving tropical forests.

Clearly, China is leading the world in low-carbon technologies. It also believes that climate cooperation with developing nations will deliver trade and security benefits. China will continue to shape climate change talks along these lines.

The next few years are too early for China to want to play as big a role as the US and EU did for the Kyoto protocol and Paris agreement. It will hold on to its red lines and only sign up to plans that meet its own economic and political ends.

Alex Lo is a professor and environmental social scientist at York St John University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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