Every country pursues its own national interest, and China is no different in that respect. However, China’s Communist leadership wants to displace the United States as the world’s most powerful country, and it has been pursuing that objective for decades..China is, in fact, becoming increasingly powerful. It has the largest army and navy in the world, and the second-largest economy..According to the legendary Chinese general Sun Tzu, in his book The Art of War, “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” A victory of this kind can be achieved by weakening one’s enemy, to the point where that enemy realizes he can’t win. Then appeasement or surrender are his only options..A new report suggests that China’s climate change policy is essentially focused on weakening the West in order to achieve global supremacy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) publicly expresses support for policies reducing climate change, but at home it commonly pursues policies that favour the use of fossil fuels. As the report suggests, this contradiction can best be understood within the context of China’s goal of seeking global power..The report in question is entitled China's Energy Dream and it was published in December 2021 by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The author is Patricia Adams, an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a pro-free market environmentalist group..The basic thesis of China's Energy Dream is that “China uses climate policy both as a way to strengthen its economy and as a weapon for weakening other countries.”.It’s able to accomplish those goals in the following way..China manufactures a large proportion of the world’s green power equipment. Currently, six of the 10 top wind turbine manufacturers are based in China. As well, most solar panels are manufactured in China. China does produce its own wind and solar power, but like everywhere else, wind and solar are unreliable so thermal generation backup is required. Nevertheless, as Adams points out, China’s “domestic renewables sites do serve as effective demonstration projects for tours by Western environmentalists, who then lobby Western nations to buy these expensive and unreliable forms of energy.”.When Western countries buy wind turbines and solar panels from China, China benefits in two ways. Firstly, it profits financially from sales of the products. Secondly, it gains a competitive advantage as the Western countries switch from reliable and less expensive fossil fuels to unreliable and more expensive green energy, weakening their own energy infrastructure. As Adams puts it plainly, China is “profiting from the sale to the West of crippling technologies.”.This explains the CCP’s enthusiasm on the world stage for promoting green climate change policies: “From China’s perspective, to win the economic war, bringing the enemy’s economy down is as worthwhile an endeavour as augmenting one’s own.”.That's to say, the Western countries are hobbling their own economies by transitioning to green energy instead of continuing to rely on fossil fuels. Adams writes, “No weapon is more potent at crippling Western economies than climate change.”.Indeed, “China is doing everything it can to encourage the West to continue its pursuit of climate reforms.”.While China is encouraging the West to move away from fossil fuels, it won’t be doing so itself. Despite its climate change rhetoric, “China is going all out, domestically and internationally, to secure more and more fossil fuels to drive its economy and achieve world superpower supremacy.”.As is well-known, China continues to rely heavily on coal as an energy source. Coal accounted for 57 percent of China’s total energy consumption in 2020. That same year, “its 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power stations was more than three times the new capacity built in the rest of the world. Another 247 gigawatts is being planned or developed, with more to follow.”.China relies on imports for most of its oil supply. In 2020, 73% of its oil came from foreign sources. Because it recognizes its future energy needs require huge amounts of fossil fuels, China has been working very hard to establish dependable suppliers and secure delivery routes..According to Adams, the CCP is not really all that concerned about reducing its carbon emissions. Doing so would only hamper the growth of the Chinese economy and harm China’s efforts to become the world’s foremost superpower. From the perspective of China’s Communist leadership, “Carbon dioxide reductions only make sense for those it wishes to harm and supplant.”.It would seem, then, China’s efforts to encourage Western countries — including Canada — to switch from fossil fuels to green energy is not based on an altruistic concern for the environment. Instead, it’s trying to gain a strategic advantage over the West..So far, the scheme seems to be working. With leaders like Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden, the West is at a clear disadvantage, and the Chinese Communist Party will continue to make progress towards achieving its goals.
