What changed
At a COP31 side event in Antalya on November 10, Hu Jun presented a report arguing that China’s green transition is becoming a major engine of economic growth.
The report says clean-energy technologies, including solar power and electric vehicles, contributed more than one-third of China’s 2025 economic increment and drove over 90% of new investment growth. It also says China’s solar-power capacity has surpassed coal-fired power capacity.
Why it matters
This frames China’s climate policy as industrial policy with a green label, not simply an environmental programme. The central claim is that cleaner technology is moving from the edges of the economy into its main investment and production channels.
Hu Jun used the Minning cooperation example to make that argument concrete: over 30 years, ecological improvement and industry-building turned a place described as a “dry beach” into a “golden beach.” The broader message is that environmental restoration and local prosperity need not be competing projects.
The international significance is more practical than rhetorical. China is presenting its transition as a source of technologies and industrial capacity that other countries can use in their own green-development efforts. Whether that momentum lasts will depend on how much of the reported investment and growth proves durable, but the direction is clear: China wants green industries treated as core infrastructure for its next phase of development.
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