Trade and Competitiveness

Trade negotiations between the European Union and China regarding solar panels have hit a bump in the road, as the European trade commissioner complained about Chinese pressure on individual EU nations that he said was designed to prevent Europe from reaching a consensus.

In a visit to China this week, Jerry Brown, the Governor of California, is putting a special emphasis on the promotion of business deals between China and California as part of the solution to China’s pollution problems.

As the biggest coal-consuming and coal-producing nation in the world, China is perhaps an unlikely place to find a burgeoning wind power industry. Yet today China is the biggest wind power market in the world and builds almost all its wind turbines at home. China’s wind power capacity has increased over a hundredfold in the past decade (from 344 MW in 2000 to 44,733 MW in 2010) and estimates for 2012 put installed wind capacity at about 80 GW (see Figure 1). Just a decade ago the country had only a handful of wind turbines in operation—all imported from Europe and the United States.

On October 12, ChinaFAQs and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on Capitol Hill about the issues driving China’s renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate policies. While China and the United States differ in important respects, they have some similar challenges and opportunities relating to energy. Both face economic, employment, energy security, and environmental challenges. The United States and China both cooperate and compete with each other on clean energy initiatives and technology.

The US department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission have commenced proceedings in trade cases regarding imports of solar cells and other clean energy products from China. The matter is now progressing through the official process for handling such international trade cases. ChinaFAQs has assembled a collection of resources and statements from official sources, media, and concerned groups regarding the cases, and will continue to monitor developments as they unfold.

ChinaFAQs Expert and Tufts University Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher recently gave a presentation on the global diffusion of cleaner energy technologies at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute. Her presentation offers a preview of her new book on the topic, forthcoming from The MIT Press in 2013. The book identifies the conditions necessary for motivating the international diffusion of cleaner energy technologies, and empirically investigates the extent to which certain barriers and incentives to their movement across international borders are valid in the Chinese context.

After meeting in Russia in early September, representatives of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations, including China and the U.S., reached an agreement on a list of environmental goods on which to cut tariffs to 5 percent or less by 2015.