CHINA’S ENERGY SECURITY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: The Role of Global Governance and Climate Change | By Kaho Yu

This book addresses a question crucial to China’s survival and development: How can the Chinese government ensure energy security by contributing to global energy governance? Scholars have examined issues related to China’s energy security, energy diplomacy, and climate governance from various perspectives; however, few studies have explored in detail how China’s latest energy strategies have affected the global energy/climate governance. In this book, author Kaho Yu sets out to “unpack the rationale, mechanism, and evolution underpinning China’s strategy for international energy cooperation” (6).

To be more specific, the author starts the discussion by outlining the historical background, structure, policy priority, and rationale behind China’s energy security from the late 1990s to 2021. This introduction aims to explain how Chinese energy diplomacy has responded to the request of dealing with energy and climate challenges from the perspective of global governance. Chapter 2 continues to uncover the key components of energy cooperation by examining China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The key contribution of this chapter is that it provides a nuanced analysis of the creation and operation of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to demonstrate China’s preferred approach to reshaping global energy governance. It also examines whether the controversial BRI has generated greater geopolitical implications beyond China’s energy cooperation in Eurasia.

In chapter 3, the author attempts to shed more light on the importance and complexity of China-Central Asia energy cooperation by offering a case study of transnational pipeline projects in Central Asia. The author provides a detailed description of how various stakeholders, including multilateral organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, have cooperated to achieve energy trade via transnational pipelines. The key question this case study seeks to address is whether China’s energy diplomacy, through the initiation and implementation of these China-Central Asia energy projects, has evolved into a more multilateral approach. The next chapter provides another detailed and interesting case study of China’s energy diplomacy by examining its energy and low-carbon investment in Africa. The author conducts research into the platforms and mechanisms that are utilized by China to facilitate energy cooperation and strengthen bonds with African countries. A noticeable shift from depending mostly upon bilateral relationships to a heavier reliance on multilateralism is also observed during China-Africa energy cooperation.

 Chapter 5 turns the discussion to the EU-China clean energy cooperation. The author describes separately the rationale of technology transfer and joint projects/initiatives that promote low-carbon development between these two economies, and the incorporation of climate concerns into energy decision making. It is found that various structural obstacles, such as the geopolitical tensions over supply chains of critical minerals and divergences in core values and policy priorities, have weakened the implementation of multilateral energy cooperation between China and the EU. The book concludes by summarizing the findings in the above case studies and arguing that China has experimented with new ideas of multilateral cooperation or global governance in its energy and climate strategy. The author illustrates four key challenges to showcase the difficulties in China’s efforts to reshape global energy and climate governance, especially in the Eurasian region: a fragmented Chinese energy governance; mis-expectations of multilateralism; a lack of urgent needs; and the lengthy process of evolutionary policy change (95–96). The book also addresses future opportunities and obstacles, including the devolution from the existing multilateral financing system, for China to strike a proper balance between respecting the existing global energy regime and breaking the ceiling of institutional constraints.

Apart from providing a detailed illustration of China’s history of ensuring energy security, the most important contribution of this book is the three case studies the author presents to examine the mechanisms and platforms that China has been utilizing to reshape global energy governance. The author also contributes to the development of international relations theories by analyzing the implementation of the BRI and the establishment of the AIIB.

Indeed, the main theme of this book is addressing the question of how China has been driven to promote global energy governance as a way to enhance its energy security due to pressures from geopolitics and climate change in the last two decades. Findings from these empirical studies are valuable. However, the author, interestingly, does not provide an eloquent response to important theoretical debates like “whether China’s strategy seeks to work within the multilateral system as a ‘responsible stakeholder’ or outside the system via its preferred approaches” (6). The evolution of China’s active participation in global energy and climate governance could have been a perfect research lens through which to observe how the second-largest energy consumer’s action and strategy have tested the relevance and validity of important paradigms of global governance. Although an in-depth empirical analysis can be found from chapters 2 to 5, a strong theoretical argument regarding how the China case has contributed to the study of unpacking the complicated linkages between energy security, foreign policy, and climate politics and whether paradigms of global governance are therefore altered is unfortunately absent. Readers also could have gained more insight into the geopolitical implications of China’s strategies if the author had described more than just China’s efforts to promote international cooperation of energy security. In addition, though the three case studies are very informative, the extent to which China is willing to use multilateral approaches regarding global energy and climate governance  could have been explored more fully. A bit more discussion about why China prefers to establish China-led institutes to manage energy challenges could be useful.

The author provides a powerful argument of how China uses global governance to carry out its energy and climate strategies. The empirical studies are impressive. Nevertheless, the discussion could be strengthened by examining more closely whether China’s attempts to reshape global energy and climate governance have altered important theoretical debates of global governance.

 Kevin Bo Miao

Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou