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■Zhuang Rui

The European Commission recently announced that it intends to impose temporary countervailing duties on electric vehicles imported from China. In May, despite strong opposition from China, the United States announced that it would significantly increase tariffs on goods imported from China, targeting China's new energy industry, specifically electric vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic batteries and other products. Against the backdrop of the sluggish recovery of the world economy and the urgent need to stimulate new growth points, such measures by Europe and the United States have seriously damaged the development environment of international trade and are typical trade protectionism. In fact, the development of China's new energy industry has created a new paradigm for high-quality development in emerging market countries, and its characteristics are mainly reflected in three aspects.

　The first is technologically innovative production. In the process of the development of China's new energy industry, technological innovations emerge in an endless stream, and innovation-driven production gradually becomes large-scale. The "Tracking Clean Energy Innovation: Focus on China" report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2022 shows that China has become a major participant in energy patent application activities in a very short period of time; in the fields of solar photovoltaics, electric vehicle technology, batteries, etc., the proportion of Chinese inventors is increasing. In particular, since 2017, the total number of Chinese patent applications in these three technical fields has exceeded two-thirds of the global low-carbon energy technology patent applications in the same period. The vigorous development of technological innovation production will inject strong impetus into world economic growth. On May 29, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would raise its forecast for China's economic growth in 2024 and 2025 to 5% and 4.5% respectively, which is 0.4 percentage points higher than the forecast in the "World Economic Outlook" report released by the agency in April, which shows that the international community is full of confidence in the Chinese economy. Against the backdrop of a sluggish global economic recovery, China's technologically innovative production represented by the development of its new energy industry is particularly important, because technological progress is a key factor in promoting sustained growth of the world economy. The development of China's new energy industry not only creates high-quality production capacity for the world, but also continuously contributes "Chinese technology" to human progress in the process of development.

　　The second is resource-saving consumption. Among the 17 sustainable development goals set by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, many goals encourage the development of new energy industries, such as "Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all", "Goal 12: Adopt sustainable consumption and production patterns", and "Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts". The development of China's new energy industry follows the principle of "resource conservation and green transformation" and has effectively promoted global resource protection and sustainable development by providing Chinese and foreign consumers with innovative and diverse new energy products. The "Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2024" report released by the International Energy Agency pointed out that China's new energy vehicle sales will increase to about 10 million in 2024, accounting for about 45% of China's domestic car sales. With the substantial growth in the consumption of new energy products, China's energy consumption structure is also constantly optimizing. According to statistics, my country's coal consumption in 2023 will account for 0.7 percentage points less than in 2022; at the same time, the consumption of clean energy such as natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power, and solar power generation will account for 26.4% of the total energy consumption, an increase of 0.4 percentage points year-on-year. The 2024-2025 Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan issued by the State Council on May 29, 2024, once again emphasized "focusing on controlling fossil energy consumption, strengthening carbon emission intensity management, and implementing special energy conservation and carbon reduction actions in different fields and industries". In the field of transportation, my country will further promote the construction of low-carbon transportation infrastructure and the low-carbon transformation of transportation equipment, including "promoting the electrification of vehicles in the public sector, orderly promoting new energy medium and heavy trucks, and developing zero-emission freight fleets", etc., and strive to reduce the carbon dioxide emission intensity in the transportation sector by 5% by the end of 2025 compared with 2020.

　　The third is mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation. In the process of building the new energy industry, China has always adhered to the principle of "open cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win", and has carried out extensive new energy-related technology, trade and investment cooperation with countries around the world to jointly expand and strengthen the new energy industry and share the dividends of new energy development. On the one hand, China has continuously improved the business environment to create conditions for foreign investors to invest in the new energy industry in China. The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Foreign Investment" issued by the Ministry of Commerce in 2021 proposed to "strengthen the complementary advantages with the signatories of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) and carry out investment cooperation in agriculture, cross-border e-commerce, digital communications, energy and other fields"; the "Catalogue of Industries Encouraged for Foreign Investment (2022 Edition)" published by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce also clearly listed the research and development and production of new materials for energy conversion in new energy engines and new energy fields, and the research and development and manufacturing of energy-saving and new energy vehicles and their key components as industrial fields that encourage foreign investment; the "Opinions of the State Council on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing Efforts to Attract Foreign Investment" (Guofa [2023] No. 11) pointed out that it is necessary to "introduce policies and measures to promote green electricity consumption, support foreign-invested enterprises to participate more in green certificate transactions and cross-provincial and cross-regional green electricity transactions", and will strengthen factor support, policy support and service guarantees for this purpose. On the other hand, China is also actively carrying out international cooperation in the new energy industry, working hand in hand with countries around the world, especially those participating in the construction of the "Belt and Road", to promote sustainable development. The "China's Progress Report on the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2023)" released by the China International Development Knowledge Center shows that over the years, China has comprehensively developed energy exchanges and cooperation with countries around the world, built five international oil and gas cooperation zones, and four major oil and gas import channels are operating stably; China has established intergovernmental energy cooperation mechanisms with more than 90 countries and regions, advocated the establishment of a "Belt and Road" energy cooperation partnership, and achieved close cooperation with international organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency. It has successfully held a series of international activities and made practical contributions to international energy cooperation.

Therefore, Europe and the United States and other countries should view the development of China's new energy industry rationally and actively seek win-win cooperation rather than unreasonable suppression. In today's world, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of industries and accelerating the development of clean energy are important ways for mankind to ensure energy security. Europe and the United States are early advocates of the new energy industry. The report "Renewable Energy 2023: Analysis and Forecast to 2028" released by the International Energy Agency pointed out that by the end of 2028, the new green hydrogen renewable energy capacity is forecast to reach 45 gigawatts (GW, million kilowatts), which is only 7% of the developers' announcement; during the outlook period, global modern renewable heat consumption will expand by 40%, from 13% to 17% of total heat consumption. However, the trend by 2028 is still largely insufficient to solve the current problem of mainly using fossil fuels for heating, and it is difficult to put the world on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Obviously, there is still huge potential and space for the development of new energy industries with green and clean energy as the main body. From a global perspective, its supply is far from meeting demand. Countries around the world should work together to accelerate the implementation of the goals set out in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, promote cooperation in clean energy and the development of new energy industries, learn from each other, and work together to build a beautiful home for mankind.

　(The author is a researcher at the Beijing Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and executive dean and professor at the Institute of International Economics at the University of International Business and Economics)

Executive ProducerWang Hui Che Haigang

ProducerLi Piguang Wang Yu Liu Weimin

Editor-in-chief: Mao Jinghui Editor: Gu Yun