China’s Green Leap Forward and what the West might learn from it
by Calvin Quek and James Thorton
China has recently set out its direction for the coming years through its 15th Five-Year Plan, alongside new environmental legislation that signals a more assertive role in global climate governance. Together, these moves offer a window into how China is navigating an increasingly uncertain world and what that might mean beyond its borders.
China’s Five Year Plans are high-level political documents that set government direction in line with long-term national goals, most notably the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.” As such, they are shaped as much by political framing such as “Dual Circulation” and “New Development Paradigm” as they are by current events. We see this in past plans: The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011 – 2015), followed the global financial crisis, and thus called for economic rebalancing away from exports, and emphasised “Scientific Development”. The 13th, called for industrial upgrade towards a 2030 carbon peak, introduced “New Development Concept” encouraging key sector growth as part of “Made in China 2025” plan, and formalized “Ecological Civilization” as a pillar to anchor government thought. And the 14th, shaped by geopolitical tensions, elevated “Dual Circulation,” positioning the domestic economy as the anchor of growth.
The 15th Five-Year Plan continues this trajectory but does so with a more cautious tone. Under the banner of “High-Quality Development” (高质量发展), it reinforces a resilience agenda focused on building a “modern industrial system” (现代化产业体系), with emphasis on sectors such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, renewable energy, and batteries.
Compared with previous plans, however, the number of top-level goals is smaller and the numerical targets more conservative, likely reflecting the reality policymakers face: a more uncertain external environment, fragmentation in global trade and rapid technological shifts. Thus, rather than locking in rigid targets, the plan leans towards directional guidance prioritising flexibility while maintaining strategic focus.
We see this conservativeness in the climate space. Headline climate targets are modest and the focus of the plan is on continuing to scale renewables and to invest in system integration. The bet is that the rapid expansion of clean energy, alongside electrification and technological upgrading, will reduce the long-term cost of decarbonisation even if it risks deferring more difficult adjustments.
This strategy sits within a broader push to build a “modern industrial system”, an electro-tech economy diversified across energy sources, electrified across sectors, and powered by advanced manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and automation. The result is not simply a shift in the energy mix, but a deeper form of industrial transformation, where energy, technology, and production systems evolve together.
Seen in this light, the 15th Five-Year Plan may appear conservative on the surface. But its underlying direction is consistent: towards an electrified, technologically advanced, and more resilient economic model.
The speed and scale of China’s electro-tech economy has caught the world by surprise. Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman has recently argued that, in key respects, China has already overtaken the United States in this domain. This is hard to ignore, and the broader question discussed at the World Economic Forum this year was this: how did China get so far ahead and what might the West learn from this.
Part of the answer of how China’s got ahead, lies in China’s long-standing approach to learning. Since the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China has studied Western economic systems closely, adapting ideas to its own context and institutional framework. This approach of learning from the external environment and adapting it to domestic conditions, are now visible in sectors ranging from renewable energy to electric vehicles and industrial supply chains.
But China’s current green trajectory is not limited to industrial policy, and this is may be what the West might learn from China. This trajectory also tied to a broader governing idea that China describes as “ecological civilization” (生态文明), which was formalized in the 13th Five Year Plan, and continues shape central planning. In its simplest expression, the idea is that economic development and nature must be given equivalent value. Development should sit harmlessly within nature, or indeed improve it.
The Yangtze River Basin is illustrative of this thinking in action. The basin spans Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and links cities such as Hangzhou and Nanjing, as one of the world’s largest urbanised regions, and is home to more than 230 million people and generating roughly a quarter of China’s GDP, yet it suffered decades of severe environmental degradation. In recent years, Beijing has responded with large-scale interventions, including a ten-year fishing ban, the relocation of polluting industries, and major watershed restoration efforts. The early results suggest that environmental indicators can improve without halting economic activity. Recent judicial developments announced recently point in the same direction. In March 2026, China passed a comprehensive environmental code, signalling a stronger role in shaping climate and environmental governance. At a time when policy momentum in other major economies is uneven, this adds to the significance of China’s domestic trajectory.
For Western countries, the point is not to romanticise China’s model, nor to ignore its contradiction, but rather to recognise that China is now generating policy experience at a scale that is too important to dismiss. This is part of the thinking behind a proposed new initiative at the Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, which aims is to bring together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from China and the West in a structured exchange of ideas, not only in sectors such as renewable energy, batteries, and industrial technologies, but also in areas that still receive less attention, including biodiversity, nature finance, and ecosystem restoration. These are not marginal questions. They sit close to the centre of how future development will be organised.
China has spent decades learning from others. The question now is whether others are willing to learn from China with the same seriousness. In a world shaped by both rivalry and shared risk, that may be one of the more important tests ahead.
