Governing Sustainable Energies in China

This book examines sustainable energy development in China, a non-liberal state, as a counterexample to conventional wisdom that effective policy outcomes are premised on the basis of decentralized governance. The use of sustainable energies as part of the solution for stabilising global warming has been promoted in industrialised countries for the past three decades. In the last ten years, China has expanded its renewable energy capacity with unprecedented speed and breadth. This phenomenon seems to contradict the principle of orthodox environmental governance, in which stakeholder participation is deemed a necessary condition for effective policy outcomes. Based upon policy documents, news report and interviews with 32 policy makers, business leaders, and NGO practitioners in selected subnational governments, this book examines the politics of sustainable energy in China. It engages debates over the relationships among democratic prioritisation, environmental protection, and economic empowerment, arguing that China’s quasi-corporatist model in the sustainable energy field challenges Western scholars’ dominant assumptions about ecopolitics.

Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen holds a Research Fellow post in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He is also a Research Associate at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. Prior to this appointment, he was an Affiliated Scholar at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, China. Chen’s work focuses on Chinese politics, environmental politics, and comparative political economy. He received his PhD from the University of Bath, UK.