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Energy Economics in China’s Policy-Making Plan Chapter j 17 329

competition for natural resources for energy security. It was this last area
that began after the turn of the 21st century, when China’s unknown global
challenges were still being defined and hence significant tasks needed to be
accomplished moving from totally government-controlled industries to ones
that were collaboration or joint ventures with foreign companies and often
owned by a majority of Chinese workers (Clark and Isherwood, 2010).
Driven by the aforementioned new strategic understanding, China has been
pursuing a global foreign economic policy that was directed at creating a
stable and peaceful environment for its economic growth through active
engagement with the West and with the surrounding Asian nations. This
strategy has become China’s globalization focus for a new or forthcoming
economy (Li and Clark, 2009). China grasped opportunities for increasing
international trade and foreign direct investment, and, more importantly, for
securing access to natural resources and energy supplies through its own
international trade and investment in the resource-rich regions such as Africa,
Latin America, and Southeast Asia, and in recent years, Central Asia. China’s
global policy strategies under an active role of the state have been seen as
effectively making it one of “globalization’s great winners” (Thøgersen and
Østergaard, 2010).
In short, China no longer was an “emerging nation” and founding
member of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) but had leapfrogged
technologically, economically, and politically into the third industrial
revolution (3IR), which moves an economy off the dependence on fossil fuels
to renewable energy, smart green grids and advanced storage technologies, as
well as sustainable communities that reverse carbon emissions and reduce
pollution; it started in Asia and the European Union over two decades
ago (Clark and Cooke, 2011).
China, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, moved actively
into the 3IR. The Pew Charitable Trusts (SJBJ, 2011, p. 8) was quoted in Apr.
2011 with global data. For example, China reported $54.4 billion in clean tech
investments for 2010, which was an increase of 39% from the year before and
thus led all nations. Germany was second with $41.2 billion with the United
States at the third position at $34 billion or 51% over 2009. Italy was fourth
with $13.98 billion or up 124% from 2009, whereas the rest of the European
Union ranked fifth with $13,48 billion, which was off 1% from 2009.
China’s remarkable achievement in economic growth was made possible
by its growing involvement in the capitalist world system. Steven Chan
verified this fact as he told the story of SunTech becoming the world’s #1 solar
manufacturing company in 2010 (Chan, 2011). However, China remained in
charge with caution and intense controls from the central government. It did
not, for example, experience the deep 2008 global economic recession. In
other words, China’s economic growth is inseparable from its increasing
dependence on global markets, with some estimates suggesting that more than
40% of its GNP is derived from international trade (Chan, 2010). In other