Xi Jinping touts China’s new-energy prowess as Joe Biden bashes its auto policies
- Ahead of biggest political event of the year, China’s energy security gets more play against the backdrop of international criticism
- President Xi’s fresh comments come as his American counterpart warns that China’s auto-related practices pose risks to US national security
Even as the rapidly rising strength and pace of China’s new-energy exports have provoked international scrutiny and a degree of green protectionism, President Xi Jinping has big ambitions to push the sector’s boundaries, seeing it as a hi-tech tonic to invigorate economic growth.
During a study session of the 24-member Politburo on Thursday, China’s leader also vowed to further tap the strategic industry’s potential while boasting its international competitiveness.
“China now leads the world in many new-energy technologies and in equipment manufacturing levels, and it has built the world’s largest clean-power-supply system,” Xi said, according to party mouthpiece Xinhua.
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“As new-energy vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products have also formed strong competition in the international market, we now have a good foundation for new-energy development,” Xi added.
However, he said, “we should also recognise that China’s energy development still faces a series of challenges, including significant demand pressure, various supply constraints, and the daunting task of transitioning to green and low-carbon energy”.
“[We should] strive to be at the frontier of energy science and technology in the world, with a focus on key areas and major energy needs, and choose technology routes reasonably,” he said.
He further called for collaborative efforts on critical core technologies in new energy and the application of research results, with an aim to cultivate energy technology and its related industries into a new growth point that will drive the upgrading of China’s industries and promote quality productivity.
China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security
Beijing has acknowledged the outsized threats from external headwinds, with more geopolitical manoeuvring potentially in the pipeline with respect to overcapacity concerns, anti-subsidy probes and national security concerns.
“China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security,” he said in a statement on the White House’s official website, adding that he was taking “unprecedented actions to ensure that cars on US roads from countries of concern like China do not undermine our national security”.
He also reiterated the importance of faster infrastructure construction to meet the needs of China’s new-energy transition, and this includes smart power grids that can accept clean energy and a charging infrastructure network that can support the expansion of electric vehicle use.
The fresh highlight came as the world’s second-largest economy has been fostering a shift toward green expansions, to the point that they were among the few bright spots amid economic setbacks that have persisted since last year.
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The production of new-energy vehicles surged to 9.443 million units in 2023, a 30.3 per cent increase compared with 2022, while solar cell production soared by 54 per cent to 540 million kilowatts, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The country’s electricity generated from clean energy sources was around 32 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2023, up 7.8 per cent, year on year.
“We need to promote cooperation in the new-energy industry chain in an orderly manner and build a new win-win model for the green-energy and low-carbon transformation,” Xi said.
“[We should] deeply participate in the reform of international energy governance and promote the establishment of a fair, just, balanced and inclusive global energy governance system.”
