Focus on Arts and Ecology

 The big environmental stories in the Chinese media (February 19-25)

“The Belt and Road Initiative is pro-development, but more specifically it is pro-green development,” said Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, last Friday.

She was responding to a question about the outsized role of Chinese finance in supporting coal power around the world. The question was put by a Beijing Daily journalist who had read a Politico article published last week claiming China “supplies 70% of the financing for the world’s new coal-fired plants.” That article highlighted the contradiction between China’s green rhetoric and the current flows of money along the Belt and Road into carbon intensive projects such as coal.

Hua Chunying also said energy poverty is an acute problem across much of the world affecting almost 800 million people, a high proportion of whom live in Belt and Road countries. In order to address this issue, she said, many countries choose coal as an affordable way to generate electricity. Hua pointed to data on China’s investment in overseas energy projects in 2020, which for the first time saw more money flow into non-fossil projects – of which a large amount supported hydropower – than fossil projects. 

The comment highlights China’s habit of reverting to local decision making and standards in its overseas investments, instead of applying its, generally higher, domestic standards. It also simplifies the chicken-and-egg situation of supply and demand. That is, demand for coal power development in many countries is likely driven in part by the ready supply of finance and construction expertise available from China and, though recently reined in, Japan and Korea. 

This week, Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center released data on the overseas energy project financing of China’s two policy banks in 2020, showing that financing continues to go into “traditional” energy infrastructure, including one coal power plant, two hydropower plants and one LNG pipeline project. There was only one loan to a solar power project, in Lesotho, during the year.

(Sources: China Dialogue)