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foreign policy, while China establishes hundreds of new solar, wind, and other
renewable energy companies. Chan (2011) stated that of the global installation
of 2.5 GW of solar energy in 2011, over half will be in China.
China has been struggling to develop and promote good relationships with
underdeveloped regions that contain potential energy reserves, such as Africa
and Latin America, through its unique international aid system linking
development aid and trade with energy suppliers. Recently, China has aimed to
prepare for technological advances and changes of climatic circumstances that
will bring maritime transport in the Arctic waters to make possible the linking
of North Atlantic and the North Pacific into closer commercial relations. Some
policy makers expect that China will increasingly strengthen its political
economy of international relations in the Arctic region and speed up its
research through its polar research bases in the Antarctica. In addition, China
is adopting different policy strategies and objectives to different regions.

Africa and Latin America
Compared with other regions in the world, these two regions are seen as
relatively stable markets as energy suppliers. China’s central policy objectives in
Africa and Latin America are stated clearly in its policy papers China’s African
Policy Paper (2006) and Latin American policy paper (2008). The policy
objectives are aimed at strengthening diplomatic and political ties with these
two resource-rich regions while at the same time securing and diversifying
energy supplies and other raw material resources including the opening of these
regions’ commodity markets. Currently, China is one of the key investors in
Africa, and its trade and investment relations in Latin America are going to
accelerate in the coming years (Hanergy, 2011). China’s increasingly dynamic
economic relations with these regions through long-term financing of
infrastructures, renewable energy technologies, and smart grid systems are seen
by some Western critiques as challenging the traditional ties between these
regions and their historical colonial ties with the Western powers. Intensification
in ChinaeAfrican and ChinaeLatin American trade relations also accelerated
the “neo-colonialist” argument claiming that China is imposing the regions with
a renewed “colonial” relationship. However, despite the criticism of China’s
energy-oriented policy in its economic and political relations with the two
regions, the Chinese style of approach and engagement, especially its aid policy
and practice, has indeed a far-reaching long-term and permanent realignment
of power relations in the conventional international aid system and has
already changed the system in many ways (Opoku-Mensah, 2010).

Middle East and Central Asia

These two regions are world’s most unstable energy markets. China has
gradually emerged as one of the regions’ main partners. China’s emerging