The European Commission recently announced its intention to impose provisional countervailing duties on electric vehicles imported from China. In May, despite strong opposition from China, the United States announced significant tariff increases on imports from China, targeting China's new energy industry specifically, including electric vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic cells, and other products. Against the backdrop of sluggish global economic recovery and the urgent need to stimulate new growth points, such actions by Europe and the United States have severely disrupted the international trade environment and are textbook examples of trade protectionism.
In fact, China's new energy industry has pioneered a new paradigm of high-quality development for emerging market countries, featuring three distinct aspects:
Firstly, technology-driven production. Throughout the development of China's new energy industry, technological innovations have emerged continuously, and innovation-driven production has gradually taken shape. According to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) 2022 report "Tracking Clean Energy Innovation: A Focus on China," China has become a major player in energy patent applications in a short period, with an increasing proportion of Chinese inventors in fields such as solar photovoltaics, electric vehicle technology, and batteries. Since 2017, China's patent applications in these three technology areas have surpassed two-thirds of global low-carbon energy technology patent applications during the same period. The vigorous development of technology-driven production will inject robust momentum into world economic growth. On May 29, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecasts for China's economic growth in 2024 and 2025 to 5% and 4.5%, respectively, an upward revision of 0.4 percentage points from its April World Economic Outlook report, indicating international confidence in China's economy. Amidst the sluggish global economic recovery, China's technology-driven production, exemplified by its new energy industry, is particularly crucial, as technological advancements are key to sustaining global economic growth. China's new energy industry not only creates high-quality production capacity for the world but also continuously contributes "Chinese technology" to human progress through its development.
Secondly, resource-efficient consumption. Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, several encourage the development of new energy industries, such as "Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all," "Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns," and "Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts." China's new energy industry adheres to the principles of "resource conservation and green transformation," vigorously promoting global resource conservation and sustainable development by offering innovative and diverse new energy products to consumers both at home and abroad. The IEA's Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2024 report predicts that China's new energy vehicle sales will increase to around 10 million units in 2024, accounting for approximately 45% of domestic vehicle sales. As consumption of new energy products grows significantly, China's energy consumption structure continues to optimize. Statistics show that China's coal consumption as a share of total energy consumption declined by 0.7 percentage points in 2023 compared to 2022. Meanwhile, the share of clean energy consumption, including natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power, and solar power, increased by 0.4 percentage points to 26.4% of total energy consumption. The Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction for 2024-2025, issued by the State Council on May 29, 2024, emphasizes "focusing on controlling fossil energy consumption, strengthening carbon emission intensity management, and implementing special actions for energy conservation and carbon reduction by sector and industry." In the transportation sector, China will further promote the construction of low-carbon transportation infrastructure and the low-carbon transformation of transportation equipment, including "promoting the electrification of vehicles in the public sector, orderly promoting new energy medium and heavy trucks, and developing zero-emission freight fleets." By the end of 2025, China aims to reduce the carbon dioxide emission intensity in the transportation sector by 5% compared to 2020.
Thirdly, mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation. In the process of building the new energy industry, China has always adhered to the principle of "open cooperation and mutual benefit and win-win results", extensively conducting cooperation with other countries in the world in new energy-related technologies, trade, and investment, jointly expanding and strengthening the new energy industry, and sharing the dividends of new energy development. On the one hand, China continues to improve the business environment and create conditions for foreign investors to invest in the new energy industry. The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Utilization of Foreign Investment" issued by the Ministry of Commerce in 2021 proposes to "strengthen complementary advantages with countries that have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement and carry out investment cooperation in agriculture, cross-border e-commerce, digital communications, energy, and other fields"; the "Catalog of Industries Encouraging Foreign Investment (2022)" published by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce also explicitly lists the research and development, production of new energy engines and new materials for energy conversion in the new energy field, as well as the research and development, and manufacturing of energy-saving and new-energy vehicles and their key components, as industries encouraged for foreign investment; the "Opinions of the State Council on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Strengthening Efforts to Attract Foreign Investment" (Guo Fa [2023] No. 11) points out that it is necessary to "introduce policies and measures to promote green power consumption, support foreign-invested enterprises to participate more in green certificate trading and cross-provincial and cross-regional green power trading", and will strengthen factor support, policy support, and service guarantees for this purpose. On the other hand, China is also actively engaged in international cooperation in the new energy industry, working together with countries around the world, especially those participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, to promote sustainable development. According to the "Progress Report on China's Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2023)" released by the China International Knowledge Center for Development, over the years, China has comprehensively developed energy exchanges and cooperation with other countries worldwide, establishing five major international oil and gas cooperation zones and stabilizing the operation of four major oil and gas import channels; China has established intergovernmental energy cooperation mechanisms with more than 90 countries and regions, advocated the establishment of the "Belt and Road" Energy Cooperation Partnership, achieved close cooperation with international organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency, and successfully held a series of international activities, making practical contributions to international energy cooperation.
Therefore, countries in Europe and America should rationally view the development of China's new energy industry and actively seek win-win cooperation rather than unreasonable suppression. In today's world, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of industries and accelerating the development of clean energy are important ways for mankind to ensure energy security, and Europe and America are early advocates of the new energy industry. The "Renewable Energy 2023: Analysis and Forecasts to 2028" report released by the International Energy Agency indicates that by the end of 2028, the new renewable energy capacity for green hydrogen is forecast to reach 45 gigawatts (GW, million kilowatts), which is only 7% of what developers have announced. During the forecast period, global modern renewable heat consumption will expand by 40%, from 13% to 17% of total heat consumption. However, the trends by 2028 are still largely insufficient to address the current issue of primarily using fossil fuels for heating and make it difficult for the world to stay on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. It is evident that there is still tremendous potential and room for the development of the new energy industry, which is dominated by green and clean energy. Globally, its supply is far from meeting demand. All countries in the world should work together to accelerate the implementation of the goals set out in the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, foster a diverse range of approaches in cooperation on clean energy and the development of the new energy industry, learn from each other, and jointly build a beautiful home for humanity.
Quoted from: China Economic Times
Link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/RryPhfSLGJgTkwIf8Q1SAQ
