China hijacking US climate change agenda, Heritage study claims

Politics

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By Ryan King

As the US squabbles internally over how to tackle the long-term challenges posed by climate change, China is maneuvering to reap the rewards and exploit the environmental agenda, a new report from the Heritage Foundation claims.

“Proponents of the radical climate change agenda are largely not considering China’s harmful role in it. The more the United States pushes for green energies, the more it becomes reliant on China — our top adversary,” the authors of the study said in a statement.

The report, titled “Chinese Handcuffs: How China Exploits America’s Climate Agenda,” was written by Erin Walsh, a senior research fellow for international affairs at Heritage’s Asian Studies Center; and Andrew Harding, a research assistant in the Asian Studies Center.

The authors surmised that China’s foray into green energy is a bid to address fundamental geopolitical and economic weaknesses with respect to its energy sector and to strengthen its international position overall.

“America is an energy superpower, one of the world’s three largest energy producers. Comparatively, China is net energy vulnerable, the world’s largest energy importer,” they wrote.

“Over the past five years, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has been executing a plan to reverse these roles by dominating the so-called green movement.”

Given serious long-term concerns about the repercussions of climate change, the authors fret that left-leaning politicians may be tempted to overlook the national security threats posed by Beijing in their pursuit of a green energy renaissance.

“For the political Left, the imperative to mitigate any effects of climate change necessitates both cheap and subsidized Chinese-manufactured infrastructure in the form of solar panels, wind turbines, grid storage, and electric vehicle (EV) batteries,” they wrote.

China now dominates 80% of the solar supply chain, including producing around 95% of the solar panels being purchased in the European Union. It also controls 40 to 50% of the global supply of rare earth elements, which are essential for the production of a wide range of green energy technology.

The paper cited China’s decision in December 2023 to ban exports of technology needed to produce rare earth magnets as an example of Beijing’s leverage.

“The current worsening threat environment should mean that the US no longer relies on any foreign adversary, especially China, for critical energy resources or supply chains,” Walsh and Harding wrote.

The authors also stressed how Beijing is “flooding the market with below-market-cost products” to thrash foreign competition from the US and elsewhere.

Further buoying this is “regulatory developments” emerging in the US even as forced labor flourishes in China. One example cited is how Xinjiang, home to the Uyghurs and a plethora of human rights concerns, was responsible for 54% of polysilicon production in China.

During 2023, clean energy investment in China jumped 40% year-on-year, mostly due to bets on research and development as well as manufacturing, according to the study.

In public, Chinese leadership has talked a big game when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.

“Humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature and go down the beaten path of extracting resources without investing in conservation, pursuing development at the expense of protection, and exploiting resources without restoration,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in an address to the United Nations in September 2020.

In 2015, Beijing agreed to the Paris Climate Accord, which seeks a net-zero carbon output by 2050.

However, the authors were skeptical of China’s sincerity in combating the crisis.

They highlighted remarks Xi gave in 2022 to the 20th Party Congress in which he “stated that China will not stop using fossil fuels until it is confident that clean energy can reliably replace them.”

“The CCP’s climate policy is part of this overall agenda to hasten the rise of China and the decline of the United States. If America loses the ability to harness the natural resources it has, … [then it] seriously risks becoming dependent on China for energy while the CCP continues to abuse the environment,” they said.

China, which is the most populous nation in the world, by far emits the most CO2 — more than double that of the US, according to the most recent data from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

The report’s authors called for the US to significantly recalibrate its policy toward combating climate change.

This includes prioritizing US energy independence, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, investigating revenue streams from environmentalist groups in the US, ramping up scrutiny of Chinese firms investing in the US, and becoming more skeptical of Chinese cooperation on climate change.

“The U.S. is actively contributing to China’s dominance over the green energy domain while failing to exploit the challenges China has in this sector,” the study said.

“[China’s] dominance is not inevitable — but the U.S. must act now to prevent it, and to free itself from its self-imposed Chinese handcuffs.”