How China overtook Europe and America in clean-tech transitions (2000–2025): Combining socio-technical transition and political economy theories to analyse global industrial shifts

Engineering notes

Engineering notes will be added by the Power for Solar editorial team.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为光伏效率、钙钛矿太阳能电池、储能技术、太阳能热利用、BIPV、并网技术等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

This paper offers a synthetic comparative explanation of China's dominance in clean-tech transitions (particularly solar-PV, wind, electric vehicles, batteries), investigating how it overtook the European Union and America, despite initially lagging. The explanation is guided by a new conceptual framework that combines insights from socio-technical transition theory (regarding transition phases, transition pathways, roles of new entrants and incumbent firms, policies as essential drivers, and feedback loops between technology, firms, and policymakers) and political economy theories (regarding economic interest groups, institutions, the state, and policies). Using secondary sources and multiple statistical datasets, the paper comparatively analyses China, the European Union and America in terms of: a) unfolding clean-tech transitions in electricity and auto-mobility, b) ‘grey’ and ‘green’ interest group strategies and activities, c) institutions and their influence on interest group access and state structuring, d) state strategic orientation and state capacity, and e) changing mixes of climate, energy, innovation, and industrial policies. Using these interacting causes, the paper identifies multiple reasons for varying clean-tech performance, including that European Union and American institutions provided incumbent firms with significant policy access, enabling them to shape policymaking, leading to weaker policies and slower transitions; that Chinese institutions shielded policymakers from incumbent firm lobbying, enabling them to develop earlier and more effective policies that were subsequently ratcheted up through adaptive policy learning and positive feedbacks; that Chinese policymakers unleashed new entrants and rapidly scaled clean-tech manufacturing, while EU and American policymakers mostly worked with incumbents (which enabled the latter to slow the pace of change).

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