Development but not innovation
In under two decades, China’s wind energy sector has gone from being literally non-existent, to holding the largest installed generation capacity of wind energy in the world. Through the first decade of the 2000s, China’s wind power generation saw an average growth of more than 70 percent annually. When doing research on the Chinese wind energy development, both technical and political, one thing became apparent early on: China was drawing heavily on both the technology and strategic experience of wind energy producing countries in the west, Denmark, Germany and the United States in particular. In fact, the very first wind farm installed in China was a research project funded by the Danish government. The early stages of development were dominated by foreign technology manufacturers and imported patents. In a 2012 article, Wang, Qin and Lewis find that while Chinese manufacturing and development of wind energy turbines are taking over the domestic market, the Chinese-developed turbines are still of lower capacity than those of their European and American counterparts. To this day, China pursues technology cooperation with foreign actors. In short, the level of technology development in China does not match their position among the world’s wind energy producers.
China must become a leader
Up until the last couple of years, China has been a developing country in terms of wind energy. Especially when it comes to high technology and large capacity installations. The massive growth has been facilitated by the ability to manufacture and install existing mid-level technology at an astonishing rate. The challenges they have been facing, and still encounter, are the same as countries further along in their development have faced and addressed in the past. China is now able to learn from their experience when drawing up policy.
This is all about to change. As China’s wind energy industry grows, so should China’s role as the leader of the international wind energy community. There are several reasons for this. The first is technology-related. China is reaching a point where it cannot keep knocking up mid-range turbines indefinitely. China may be a vast mass of land, but at some point, manufacturing and installation must move focus from quantity to quality. Efficiency must take the place of volume. As a leading power, China must take part in answering the need for more powerful and efficient turbines, and not rely on foreign actors to develop this technology.
The second reason is policy-related. As China has been playing catch-up with other wind energy producing countries, the policy and system-integration challenges encountered in China have already been met and addressed by other countries in the past. As China moves to the forefront of wind energy development, it will encounter obstacles previously unknown, and cannot rely on the experience of others in handling them.
The third reason is slightly vaguer, and it is similar to a change that China is facing in other areas of the international community. It relates to what David Shambaugh, when discussing China’s role in global governance, calls being “a responsible stakeholder”. As China’s share of the global wind energy industry grows, so does its responsibility. As the leading wind energy producer in the world, China should be the driver behind future development, not a mere passenger. In wind energy as in other parts of the global economy, China must come to grips with having to wave goodbye to the label of “developing”.
Outlook
China deserves every bit of praise it receives for the development of the domestic wind energy sector. Still, it is important to remember that this development is being helped forward by the earlier development of others. Although the Chinese wind energy industry will continue to develop, China is no longer a developing wind energy nation. The Chinese wind energy industry has been standing on the shoulders of giants. Now the time has come to keep climbing on their own – and pull the giants up after them.
Aslak Celius is a Master student at the Chinese Society and Politics program at UiO's Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages.