Constructing Green Influence: China's Infrastructure as an Exercise in Soft Power

Prominent Western political scientists have long spoken of  “China’s Soft Power Deficit”. The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), China’s flagship international development project, can instead be characterised as a grand strategy involving elements of both hard power and, crucially, soft power. While commentators have argued the BRI has failed to advance the latter, this article contends that the environmental turn in China’s domestic and foreign policy is beginning to transform its infrastructure programme into a more effective instrument of soft power. In the face of the U.S.’s second exit from the Paris Climate Accord and absence from climate fora, including but not limited to the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (better known as ‘COP30’), China has doubled down on its diplomatic efforts to lead the global green transition.

Setting the Stage for Green Development: China’s Post-2008 Infrastructure Expansion

China’s infrastructure development can be evidenced in a myriad of grand projects: from maps showing China’s sprawling high-speed rail network (see Figure 1); to Chongqing’s rise as a symbol of China’s hyper-urbanised, technology-driven development model (often labelled a “cyberpunk city”); to the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge as “the world's longest sea crossing bridge”. The roots of the superpower’s meteoric increase in public investment can be traced back to the 11^th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) and subsequently to China’s significant fiscal stimulus in response to the 2008 Financial Crisis. Spearheaded by former Premier Wen Jiabao and the now disgraced Railways Minister Liu Zhijun, China’s infrastructure spending reached a staggering 7-9% of GDP by the late 2000s. 

Figure 1: China’s Rail Network (Wikimedia Commons)

Although this rapid expenditure growth has been retrospectively criticised by some, including economic geographer Lu Dadao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for fuelling public debt, a critique that has also been rebutted , others remarked that China’s post-2008 supply-side interventions “saved the world from recession”. Debates over economic impact aside, these material advances later enabled the Communist Party leadership’s ideological turn towards “生态文明” (meaning “ecological civilization”) and a push for “创新、协调、绿色、开放、共享的新发展理念” (literally translating to “an innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared new concept of development”). This latest intellectual chapter manifests materially in a concerted effort to electrify the nation. 

The World’s First ‘ElectroState’: Electrification as a New Dimension of China’s Export-Led Economy

The electrification of China’s transport and energy infrastructure has advanced both its domestic climate goals and its broader geopolitical ambitions. Its share of electricity (as opposed to fuel) in total energy consumption has recently exceeded both the U.S. and the EU. China’s dominance of the electric vehicle market further illustrates its leap from ‘mere’ world-leading domestic infrastructure investment to a grand outward-oriented green economic strategy. By 2024, 69% of electric vehicles sold globally were produced in China. Responsible for two-thirds of the world’s wind and solar projects, as well as controlling over 80% of the global solar panel manufacturing supply chain, the country has emerged as a green technology superpower.

Described by scholars from Columbia University as “The Energy Bipolar World”, a new international order defined by ‘PetroStates’ (principally, the ‘Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ and the U.S.) and ‘ElectroStates’ (chiefly, China and the EU) appears to be taking shape. The Trump administration’s recent intervention in Venezuela, often framed around U.S. energy interests, supports this narrative. Yet declining demand for fossil fuels signals the long-term primacy of clean technology supply chains over the blunt, price-fixing diktats of oil and gas cartels. Composed of a “new trio” of exports of solar panels, electric vehicles, and batteries, China has increasingly positioned itself as a geo-strategically advantageous economic leader in the global green transition.

China’s Green Credentials Go Global: Closing the “Soft Power Deficit”

China’s renewed climate ambition contrasts with the U.S.’s crashing exit from key climate agreements and inter-governmental institutions. Recent analysis shows that China’s carbon dioxide emissions may have peaked in March 2024. This performance lends credibility to China’s longstanding mantra of ‘under-promise and over-deliver’, reinforcing its emerging green soft power narrative. The superpower’s aims of peaking emissions by 2030, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 7-10% by 2035, and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 should be viewed “as a baseline and not a ceiling”.

The latest evolution of the BRI, the ‘Green Silk Road’ (‘绿色丝绸之路’), seeks to export the achievements of China’s domestic green infrastructure on a global scale. As China’s access to the European single market becomes increasingly restricted, Southeast Asia may transform into the centre of ‘Green Silk Road’ investment and so-called ‘win-win cooperation’ (‘合作共赢’). Indeed, many projects within the existing BRI framework, such as the Laos-China Railway and Lancang–Mekong Cooperation (a water governance forum between Southeast Asian countries), already further environmental sustainability. 

The explicit framing of infrastructure projects as ‘Green’ , however, contributes to changing public perceptions of China’s environmental reputation abroad. While scepticism persists over whether such investments constitute ‘greenwashing’, China’s diplomatic posture has nonetheless shifted towards shaping global climate discourse in the U.S.’s wake. This evolving focus on environmental diplomacy is motivated both by a desire to counter enduring Western-led criticism of China as a major polluter and by an ambition to become a ‘Green Great Power’. Survey results demonstrate that such efforts appear to have improved China’s environmental image amongst segments of the international community.

The success of China’s ‘green soft power’, defined broadly as the nexus of the “traditional concept of soft power with a state’s behaviour on environmental and climate issues”, may diverge in bilateral and multilateral settings. China’s multilateral environmental diplomacy at annual COPs has effectively transformed the nation into a key climate spokesperson for the Global South. However, some argue that other BRI ventures, such as coal-based projects within the ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’, erode China’s newfound claim to ‘green soft power.’ Others counter that China has increasingly attempted to redirect its investments in Pakistan towards hydropower and solar energy. 

Nevertheless, China’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in clean technology since 2023 has totalled 180 billion USD, with 75% of all of China’s low-carbon FDI going towards the Global South. This trend illustrates how China’s leadership places substance over style, embracing essayist Lu Xun’s (鲁迅) age-old mantra of ‘事实胜于雄辩’ (meaning ‘actions speak louder than words’). As China rebrands the BRI into an explicitly ‘green’ exercise in statecraft, efforts to portray the superpower as a socially responsible actor in environmental diplomacy may finally be bearing fruit.

EU-China Climate Diplomacy: A False Binary between Hard and Soft Power?

The delayed results of former President Jiang Zemin’s ‘Go Out policy’ (or ‘走出去战略’) can be observed through the entry of private Chinese electric vehicle firms into Europe. Despite import tariffs imposed by the European Commission, the EU remains the largest export market for Chinese-manufactured ‘new energy vehicles’ (NEVs). A streak of Chinese automakers have all announced plans to build factories in Europe or localise their supply chains, including BYD’s imminent opening of an electric car plant in Hungary.

As China becomes the driving force of both European consumers’ shift towards electric vehicles, as well as the clean technology super-manufacturer of the EU’s wider ‘Green Deal’, an intersection between hard power and soft power emerges: “its material success speaks for itself”. In other words, the increasing visibility of Chinese clean technology within Europe is bolstering China’s reputation as a ‘Green Great Power’; thereby further boosting the appeal of Chinese electric vehicles and related clean technologies. This self-fulfilling prophecy strengthens “The Case for a European-Chinese Green Pact”. Such an alliance would combine China’s low-carbon technology firepower and rhetorical leadership of the Global South, with the EU’s far-ranging regulatory influence and commitment to multilateral institutions. An EU-China climate coalition could represent one of the most consequential mechanisms for advancing global climate governance, yet whether sufficient political will exists on either side remains uncertain.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect those of European Guanxi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremy Azzopardi is a Beijing-born and raised Maltese national pursuing a BA in History & Politics at the University of Oxford. His interests include contemporary China, climate politics, and the European Union. A graduate and scholarship awardee of the Western Academy of Beijing, he is an accomplished youth leader winning a national debate championship in China, presenting at several TEDxYouth conferences, and serving as the chief elected representative for student groups in both the United Kingdom and China. He is quadrilingual with fluency in English, Maltese and Mandarin, and is currently developing his proficiency in Cantonese.

This article was edited by Camilla Penserini and Rory O'Connor.

Featured Images:  Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), met with H.E. Mauro Vieira, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, on the sidelines of the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license / Rail map of PRC / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license / Wikimedia Commons / Free for use