The Chinese road to decarbonisation: China’s party-state capitalism in the political economy of fossil energy phase-out

While blind spots around climate change and China in the literature are now being plugged, there remains an imbalance between emphases placed on green energy build-out versus fossil energy phase-out in the political economy of global energy transition. China’s paradoxical energy economy raises the puzzle as to whether the structures of China’s party-state capitalism render it capable of successfully confronting the fossil fuel industry, just as it has scaled green technologies. This article historicises China’s fossil economy, identifying a unique potentiality for fossil energy phase-out arising from its idiosyncratic post-revolutionary development trajectory. The prominence of the CCP in China’s party-state capitalism contrasts with the West’s basis in profit-seeking market forces. This divergence underpins distinct power resources to dominate carbon-intensive industries and ideational resources to legitimate the social upheavals of energy transition. In practice, fossil energy phase-out is far from pre-determined as the potentiality rests in an ongoing struggle between corporate and political objectives within the regime as well as the uncertain responses of domestic populations and international actors. Regardless, scholars and practitioners alike should now understand China as standing alone in the world system as a geopolitically ascendent, continent-sized, post-revolutionary party-state with unique capacities to lead global energy transition.