Planet China

Welcome to Inside Climate, a podcast from the staff of Inside Climate News. In this episode, we discuss China’s burgeoning electric-vehicle exports—now entering a key market for U.S. automakers—and the environmental impacts of Beijing’s massive “Belt and Road Initiative,” which funds and builds overseas infrastructure projects like roads, railways, ports and dams. One such project threatens the survival of the world’s most critically endangered ape.

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KILEY PRICE

As the United States engages in trade wars with some of its closest allies, it’s rattling major industries here at home.

DAN GEARINO: Canada is the largest export market for U.S. automakers.

For years, China has been strategically positioning itself as a major international automaker, dominating the electric vehicle market. Now, it’s perfectly positioned to take advantage of the political moment.

DAN GEARINO: If you have this geopolitical rival that has gotten really good at making the cars of the future, and they are setting up in your largest and most important export market—if you’re a U.S.-based automaker, that’s not great.

But as Inside Climate News has documented over the last year through its “Planet China” reporting, Beijing is interested in more than just cars.

NICK KUSNETZ: Chinese companies are either going overseas to build projects like dams, roads, railways, or in many cases Chinese banks are financing the projects. 

While some of these projects have brought low-emissions solutions to countries across the world, there have been environmental consequences.

NICK KUSNETZ: This dam project, it’s being built right in the middle of the habitat of the world’s most critically endangered ape. 

Opposing this Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam in Indonesia has come with deadly consequences. 

NICK KUSNETZ: There was a lawyer working with a local advocacy group, and he was found dead on the side of the road.

That’s up next on Inside Climate.

Welcome to Inside Climate. I’m your host, Kiley Price.

Under President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, the United States has focused on protectionism. The resulting trade wars with some of America’s closest allies have increased the cost of living.

Meanwhile, China has been taking a different approach. Since 2013, the country has been executing a massive global economic strategy called the Belt and Road Initiative. The goal is to fund and build huge infrastructure projects overseas to support domestic industry.

Belt and Road projects include building railroads, pipelines and ports. By expanding trade routes, China can better export other things it produces—like cars.

It may come as a surprise, but China is now the largest vehicle producer in the world. The country’s automakers produced more than 34 million cars in 2025. That’s three times more than U.S. automakers. And more than 7 million of the Chinese cars were exported overseas, the most by any country in the world.

What’s even more impressive is China produced more than 16 million cars in 2025 that were pure electric, plug-in hybrid or hybrid vehicles. 

As U.S. automakers reduce their electric ambitions, China is leaning in and making inroads with some of America’s most important automarkets, like Canada. 

We’ll speak to Dan Gearino—ICN’s resident clean energy reporter and unofficial EV expert—on what’s happening across America’s borders with Chinese cars.

And then we’ll pivot to Nicholas Kusnetz, who traveled to Indonesia to report on a newly identified and extremely rare orangutan species that lives in the middle of the Sumatra forest, where a Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam is threatening the great apes’ survival.

Let’s get started.

China’s EVs Come to Canada

KILEY PRICE

Welcome to the show, Dan.

DAN GEARINO

Good to be here.

KILEY PRICE

So, Dan is the author of ICN’s Inside Clean Energy newsletter. And he’s been covering the business and policy of renewable energy and utilities. So Dan came to ICN in 2018 after a nine-year tenure at The Columbus Dispatch, where he covered the business of energy there too. Before that, he covered politics and business in Iowa and New Hampshire. 

So today we are going to talk about China. And we couldn’t have an episode dedicated to China without talking about the country’s expanding role as an automobile exporter and their dominance in the electric vehicle market. So can you help me understand how big the Chinese automobile industry is right now?

DAN GEARINO

Well, it was surprising for some, a few years ago, when China’s automotive industry grew to be larger than the U.S. auto industry. Because for the longest time you wouldn’t have thought of China as a major maker of cars. So not only is China now the largest auto industry and largest auto market—so that means number of cars produced and just people within China buy more cars, and it’s a larger auto industry than any other in the world—they’re also the largest exporter. 

Basically, if you just click down the list of all of the No. 1s in the auto industry, No. 1 seller of EVs, No. 1 exporter of EVs, it’s China. It is China in many ways displacing the U.S. that at one time was on the top of these lists. 

KILEY PRICE

So what makes EVs so special in China, and why are they such huge sellers there and abroad?

DAN GEARINO

The Chinese market has really embraced EVs for a bunch of different reasons. One of them is, these are affordable vehicles. You can get an EV for a price that is competitive with an internal combustion engine vehicle. That’s different from what you see in the United States and what you see in Europe, where EVs are more common on the luxury end of the market. There are not quite as many affordable EVs. 

KILEY PRICE 

So Dan, when you say they’re really inexpensive, how much are we talking?

DAN GEARINO

There are a whole bunch of different varieties of inexpensive in the Chinese market. A lot of vehicles in what would be kind of twenty-something-thousand-dollar range, which would be fairly decent quality EVs from major brands, which again would be substantially less expensive than you would see in the U.S. But the important thing is that you have a whole bunch of variety on the less expensive end. There’s a real lack of variety at the bottom of the market price-wise in the United States.

KILEY PRICE 

And is there one standout company in China that is really leading the way on this?

DAN GEARINO

So there are a bunch. The one that we often talk about from a Western perspective is BYD because that’s the one that’s showing up in so many places. But there are a whole bunch of brands.

KILEY PRICE 

So we won’t really see many BYD cars here in the U.S. because there’s currently a 100 percent tariff on Chinese automobile parts. But Chinese imports are slowly infiltrating North America. Last January you wrote a column for Inside Clean Energy describing how Canada announced a trade agreement to reduce tariffs on Chinese automobiles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent. Why were high tariffs in place in the first place, and why did they drop theirs so low?

DAN GEARINO

It’s important to understand that at one time, until really recently, the Canadian auto market and the U.S. auto market were these kind of almost conjoined twins. You’ll have parts suppliers in both countries, and you’ll have trucks going over the border for parts that are serving both countries. It was one big market and it was a really useful partnership that changed with some of the super aggressive tariffs that the Trump administration’s doing that make it so that these supply chains, which have taken decades to put into place, are being challenged. 

KILEY PRICE

So what does this new Canadian-Chinese relationship mean for U.S. automakers at a time when there is this tension between the U.S. and Canada?

DAN GEARINO 

The concern if you’re a U.S. automaker is that Chinese electric vehicles are gonna come into this market and they’re going to undercut U.S.-made vehicles on price. You will be able to get an EV with pretty decent features for $5,000, $10,000 less than they’re being sold by companies that are already operating here. And this would create this almost kind of a death spiral where as the auto market moves toward electrification over time, you would have Chinese companies gaining a foothold and having a significant price advantage. 

U.S. automakers would say that some of that price advantage is because of government support within China that is unfair competition, or that’s part of the argument that they make. But the tariffs are to reduce competition because U.S. automakers don’t think they are able to compete. 

KILEY PRICE

But this relationship is changing between Canada and China.

DAN GEARINO

Yes. So with the U.S. imposing tariffs and just treating a longtime trusted partner kinda poorly, with imposing tariffs, one of the things that happened is China is being pushed to have a closer relationship with other countries. And one of the things that has happened is the government in Canada is looking for opportunities to have closer ties with China. That would have been pretty close to unthinkable before because you wouldn’t do something that would upset the Canadian and American auto industries, ’cause, they were kind of two halves of the same thing.

KILEY PRICE

Separating the conjoined twins.

DAN GEARINO

Exactly, yeah. But when that relationship is fundamentally damaged, as Prime Minister Carney has said it is, then you can do things like try to get investment from Chinese companies. And the hope, if you’re Canada, is that this will eventually lead to joint ventures in Canada, this will lead to manufacturing of some of these vehicles in Canada, that this could be a real economic boon to Canada. 

KILEY PRICE 

Right, and this sounds really familiar given all the recent headlines surrounding this trade war between the U.S. and Canada. So what does this blossoming relationship between Canada and China mean for U.S. automakers?

DAN GEARINO

Well, Canada is the largest export market for U.S. automakers. So if you have this geopolitical rival that has gotten really good at making the cars of the future, and they are setting up in your largest and most important export market, if you’re a U.S.-based automaker, that’s not great. And you see versions of this with European automakers too and Chinese companies showing up in Europe.

KILEY PRICE 

Yeah, and it sounds like it’s pretty early, so maybe you can break down some of those numbers for me and talk about how dominant are Chinese EVs in North America right now?

DAN GEARINO

So the North American auto market is almost completely the U.S. auto market. And so with these tariffs and with U.S. policies that are keeping Chinese EVs out, that means that the market share is tiny. You see Chinese companies have been selling vehicles in Mexico and that’s significant, and it’s contributing to rising market share in Mexico. In many ways this is this kind of in-between step toward those companies selling in the United States. And the question just is when. 

KILEY PRICE 

Are other countries expanding their Chinese EV markets as well?

DAN GEARINO

Yes. and you see versions of this happening all over the place. You look at Mexico, you look at parts of South America. A lot of what we’re seeing is just BYD shows up and starts opening dealerships and then all of a sudden EV market share goes from nothing to something, you know, goes from zero to 10 percent seemingly overnight. 

KILEY PRICE 

Is there a standout example to you?

DAN GEARINO

The one that we wrote about recently was Argentina, which had a couple local brands that would sell very small numbers. 

But then BYD shows up and in the matter of maybe a year, Argentina is on track to have an EV market share that exceeds that of the United States. Just to get into some numbers: So U.S. market share for EVs last year was about 10 percent. 

Argentina is going to be near 10 percent, maybe even over 10 percent, pretty soon. It’s almost unbelievable level of growth. Now keep in mind, the Argentine vehicle market is small enough that you can have that transformation happen more quickly with just a few dealerships, as they have done. 

You’ll see some of the same challenges with a lack of a charging network and the need to build a charging network. But it helps so much to get off to such a strong start. It kind of shows other automakers there’s a market here. And that’s one of the key themes, is that these are markets that were just kind of ignored or maybe taken for granted and BYD in this case saw an opportunity.

KILEY PRICE

So, does the expansion of EVs into these emerging markets signal good news for reducing global transportation emissions? 

DAN GEARINO

OK, the first answer is, we don’t know. And the reason that we don’t know is, if ownership of electric vehicles is signaling a country having substantially more people who now can afford vehicles, let’s say the number of vehicles in a country goes up by, just pick a number, 30 percent, even if those are all EVs, you’re still having an emissions effect from, you got more vehicles on the road. You have more demand for nice roads.  

KILEY PRICE 

So building out the infrastructure, you mean, would have an emissions toll.

DAN GEARINO

Yes, yeah. And one of the people that we’ve spoken with in covering this at University of California at Davis was basically saying he doesn’t think that the shift to electric vehicles is necessarily going to lead to an overall drop in emissions because of all of these other factors. Now that’s specifically talking about the Global South or whatever term you want to use. If you were to take an established and developed auto market, like say the United States, and if you were to just snap your fingers and make it 80 percent electric vehicles, that would have an emissions effect. 

KILEY PRICE 

So maybe now’s a good time, then, to pivot back to our neighbors in Canada. Do experts expect to see Chinese EVs really take off there the way that they have in these other places like Mexico and Argentina? Like could I go up to Toronto right now and buy a BYD car and then just drive it back to New York City?

DAN GEARINO

You could not. And there’s legislation in the United States where they don’t even want you, if you’re Canadian, to be able to drive a Chinese vehicle over the border. You can see some Chinese vehicles near the Mexican border, where people who live in Mexico are just visiting. You definitely can’t buy it and drive it to New York. 

Now what happens within the Canadian market—you couldn’t time it better. Canadian consumers are gonna get these vehicles that are some of the world’s best-selling EVs, that are well-regarded in terms of quality, at a time when anti-American sentiment is really high—for good reason, because America is intentionally inflicting harm on Canada’s economy. I suspect that these vehicles are gonna sell pretty well.

KILEY PRICE 

Is there a BYD dealership open now in Canada?

DAN GEARINO

There is not. Maybe late this year is what has been suggested. When that happens it’ll be a significant news event, I suspect.

KILEY PRICE 

So it sounds like America will continue to try to stop this Chinese EV expansion here, but won’t be able to stop this global domination of the market. Why did China bet so hard on building out and commanding the EV industry around the world?

DAN GEARINO 

I think it was just a matter of identifying an opportunity and having government support, heavily subsidizing industries, to get started. And you see China dominating across the clean energy economy. China also has a ton of dirty energy. China also is a major emitter. China has severe problems in terms of many aspects of its contributions to climate change. But if you’re looking at who is well-positioned to be the leader of the auto market 20 years from now, they’re very, very well-positioned.

KILEY PRICE 

Does the Trump administration seem concerned about this?

DAN GEARINO 

Not at all. Concerned about wanting to protect the U.S. market, but not seemingly cognizant of how U.S. automakers want to be global players. And if you make it so that you are functionally not competing in all of these markets around the world—where competitors can beat you on price, competitors can also beat you on quality—you’re making it so that these U.S. brands are going to be, over time, mainly serving a U.S. audience. 

I would say there must be people in the Trump administration who can see this happening and would be concerned about it, but it is this shift in the competitive balance that should be more concerning than it is to the administration. 

KILEY PRICE 

How is China’s investment in EV technology altering global markets?

DAN GEARINO

You’re seeing the adoption of electric vehicles go from almost nothing in a lot of these places to this really rapid rate of adoption. In doing so, you’re selling a whole bunch of Chinese products, Chinese cars with Chinese batteries. It is really helpful in terms of Chinese companies being able to grow and expand. And it’s also economic development for the countries themselves where the investment is taking place. 

So you have this mutually beneficial relationship. At a time when the U.S. is being so almost belligerent with its trading partners, and you have this other global superpower that’s just kinda like, “Hey, I want to invest in your country,” and is kind of almost the good cop, which is so odd; it says a lot about where we are. But we’re living in this time where the United States is increasingly an adversary for a lot of countries, and China is just right there saying, “Hey, let’s work together.”

KILEY PRICE

You’ve actually perfectly teed up our next guest, Nicholas Kusnetz, who has been reporting on China’s growing economic ambitions abroad. Thank you so much for this great discussion on Chinese EVs.

DAN GEARINO

Yeah, it’s great to be here.

The Environmental Impact of China’s Overseas Investments

KILEY PRICE

It’s great to have you on, Nick, to talk about your recent Planet China reporting.

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

Yeah, I’m happy to be here.

KILEY PRICE

So, Nick, you’ve been with ICN for 10 years, based in New York. Just prior to joining ICN, you worked for the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica. Your articles have appeared in more than a dozen publications, including Wired, The Washington Post, Business Week, The Nation and The New York Times. You and several colleagues were recently named as finalists for the Oakes Award, which is a prestigious prize for distinguished environmental journalism for that Planet China series that we are going to be talking about today.

We just heard from Dan Gearino about China’s economic ambitions to boost its status as a global trade partner, especially when it comes to electric vehicles. This is part of a larger strategy called the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. So what exactly is that?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ  

So the Belt and Road Initiative, it’s really an umbrella for all of China’s overseas investments. And these are coming both from state-owned enterprises and from private corporations. Since 2013, when it was announced as sort of a concept, there’s been more than $1.5 trillion in investments. 

So these are construction contracts, but also lending from banks and all types of investment where Chinese companies are either going overseas to build projects like dams, roads, railways, or in many cases Chinese banks are financing the projects. And one other thing: It’s important to note it’s not really like a top-down government-mandated system. It’s really more disparate, and there’s just many corporate entities operating and it’s kind of a framework for all of that investment to operate within.

KILEY PRICE

So how did an assignment about China’s Belt and Road Initiative take you to Indonesia?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ  

We wanted to look at the environmental and climate impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative in the series. And really early on in my research, Indonesia jumped out. It’s a top destination for Belt and Road investment. China is the top source of foreign investment there. It’s also the world’s fourth most populous country and one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases. 

So it was just kind of an obvious place to start to look. And as I was doing that research, I got a tip about this dam project in Sumatra backed by Chinese corporations. And it’s not a huge dam, but it’s being built right in the middle of the habitat of the world’s most critically endangered ape.

KILEY PRICE

Right, so you’re focusing on orangutans here. I actually traveled to Indonesia last year, not for a story, but for one of the rare vacations we journalists take. And I got to see orangutans in Sumatra. Are these the same threatened apes or are these different?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So this is a distinct species. And until not that long ago, there were only two known species of orangutans, one in Sumatra. But a couple of decades ago, scientists had heard rumors of some orangutans living farther south than they were generally known to be at that time. 

They start doing some research in this really mountainous, rugged area. It’s densely forested. It’s kind of a little ecosystem that’s created by these mountains. It’s only about the size of Los Angeles. But there were indeed orangutans in the area. And as they continued to study them, they began to notice some differences. And in 2017, they published their findings that it was a distinct species called the Tapanuli orangutan. It immediately became the rarest great ape. There were thought to be fewer than 800 alive. 

KILEY PRICE 

So it’s like: New species, but also, it’s endangered.

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ  

Yeah, and you know, one of the scientists who I spoke to said it was like this kind of bittersweet moment, right? Because it’s one of the most exceptional, exciting things for someone in his field to do to identify a new species. But right away it was like critically endangered, really kind of on the edge of survival. And to make matters worse, the same year that they published these findings was when construction began on the dam.

KILEY PRICE 

So why would this dam affect orangutans?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So the habitat, it’s kind of cut by a valley and it’s broken into three sections. And the dam project is on the river that runs right where these three areas come together. So it’s a key kind of connector for the three populations that are separated. And scientists were immediately concerned that the dam, which would come along with some roads, power lines, would essentially cut and separate these three bits of habitat that were already distinct and already kind of hard for the orangutans to cross between. And with a population so low, if you isolated a group of a hundred or fewer in one of these areas, that could basically be the end of that group.

KILEY PRICE 

So like an extinction-level event?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ  

Yeah, I mean the other thing is the species, obviously with such low numbers, it’s already under a lot of pressure.

There’s populations around the area and they’ve been encroaching with logging. There’s a mine in the area that’s been encroaching on some of the habitat. And so all these things came together when the dam project started to work. The scientists really started to warn, like, this could tilt the species towards extinction.

KILEY PRICE 

Right, it’s worth reminding people that this area of Sumatra has been significantly altered by some of what you mentioned, with industrial development over the past 100 years.

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

That’s right. I mean, Sumatra was once largely covered in forests. Of course, people have lived there for millennia, but particularly under Dutch colonial rule, a lot of the deforestation picked up with plantations, and then deforestation really accelerated towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this century. And you know, huge sections of the island’s forests just were converted into palm oil plantations, farms and other uses. And luckily the deforestation rates have slowed somewhat in recent years, but it’s still happening.

KILEY PRICE

Does it seem like there’s a strong desire in this area to protect that land and the species that depend on it?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So yes, there is. You know, there have been strides to rein in some deforestation more broadly, not necessarily in this little area where the Tapanuli orangutan is, but across Sumatra. And when the dam project began and when this discovery was announced that this was a distinct species and now critically threatened by the dam, there was a huge global campaign. 

I mean, there were local advocacy groups, local scientists who were really passionate about this, and they teamed up with global groups. There was this big campaign trying to pressure one of the Chinese banks that was behind the project, and others, the Indonesian government, to basically halt it. 

But as that was happening, a lot of the people involved started to feel a lot of blowback. So some of the scientists involved were fired from positions. Some of the foreign scientists that were working on this and speaking out about it were barred from the country’s national parks. Some of the activists who were working on this, local activists in Sumatra, started to face more intense pressure. Some even were getting threatening phone calls, texts. 

There was a lawyer working with a local advocacy group who had received death threats. And in 2019, he was found dead on the side of the road under suspicious circumstances. And so a lot of his family felt like this was not a coincidence. The police said it was a motorcycle accident, but yeah, there were a number of circumstances that led people involved to think that he had actually been killed.

KILEY PRICE 

Why was his death considered suspicious?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So he was brought to the hospital by people who were not identified. But then a number of details sort of didn’t line up with the police explanation, according to family members and colleagues. They said that, for example, he had suffered head injuries, but the rest of his body was relatively uninjured, even though this had been a motorcycle accident, supposedly. His clothes were muddied, but the place where he had been found was clean pavement. Also, his laptop, wallet, ring and helmet were all missing when he was brought to the hospital.

KILEY PRICE

So as you mentioned earlier, this seems like a relatively small dam in comparison to some other projects, and that level of intimidation feels a bit excessive for this type of project. Why do you think the opposition has been punished so severely, and did the objections to the dam work?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

One thing that was just obvious from the pushback was, there was a lot of pressure. There were powerful interests, both locally and at the national level in Indonesia, who wanted this built. 

Now, we did try to talk to the damn company and did not get responses, couldn’t get through to people. But at the time, a spokesperson for the company did say that, you know, they were not involved in any way, denied any link to the death. 

KILEY PRICE

So just backing up a little bit, how needed was this hydroelectric dam for Indonesia’s power grid?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So this is debatable. It’s not a huge dam, first of all. And so it would have provided a fair amount of electricity, but it’s not like it would have, like, fundamentally changed the grid in Sumatra.

But a lot of the activists who were opposed to the project pointed out some details that they said showed it wasn’t really needed. For example, Sumatra had a relatively high rate of electrification compared to other parts of the country. I mean, Indonesia is an archipelago, so a dam in Sumatra is not going to help people in Java, for example. 

There is this argument that there are many ways to generate electricity, and when you have something—you know, this is a unique place. It’s small. It’s a species of orangutan that lives nowhere else, right? And there’s little doubt that this dam project is going to further threaten an already critically endangered species that’s really on the brink of survival. So I think a lot of the scientists involved said that the cost is just simply too high.

KILEY PRICE 

So you were in Indonesia a year ago to report this story and recently wrote an update. Where do the Tapanuli orangutan populations now stand?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

So after I was there, there was a devastating cyclone that hit Sumatra in the region. It really wiped out many villages. It killed many, many people across the area, but it also caused really widespread damage in the core habitat for the Tapanuli orangutan. It caused a lot of landslides. It’s very steep terrain, and the landslides basically just gashed away huge sections of its habitat. 

And so scientists use satellite images to measure how much forest was lost and then extrapolate from that based on what they knew about how many orangutans there were, where they lived, to estimate that something like 50 or 60 orangutans were probably killed in this cyclone.

KILEY PRICE 

Right, which might not seem like a lot, but based on the numbers of their entire population, is that significant?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

That’s right. And what’s more, sort of parallel to this, a new survey was released which had a more accurate assessment of the population. And it is from before the cyclone; it estimated there were probably in the low 700s remaining. So if you take 50 or 60 out of that, you’re really down to the mid-600s. 

I talked to some of the scientists who have been studying the species for decades now, and they said it’s not too late yet. The species can still be protected. They pointed to some groups of mountain gorillas in Central Africa that had gotten to numbers like this—you know, super low populations—but there were really concerted campaigns that had local buy-in, national buy-in, international support, and have started to turn it around. 

So the problem is that there is no plan like that right now in Indonesia. And all the people involved say they’ve been calling for this, and it’s just not happening.

KILEY PRICE 

Did you see any of these orangutans? 

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

I did not, unfortunately. You know, there are not that many of them, and they’re very reclusive. But I did speak with people who see them. There was villagers who lived nearby who see them, and I also spoke with some people who worked on the dam who had seen them. There had been public reports that orangutans have been found dead on the site of the dam project. This was some bit of debate with the company, you know, saying that they would be able to build without harming the species, without getting in the way of its movement. But there’s clear indications that bringing more people into the area is causing more conflict. 

One thing that’s just worth noting is what an amazing animal orangutans are. And when you speak to people who work on them or even who just have seen them, it’s kind of a reverence that they have. The name translates to forest person. Some of the people who live in villages right near the dam project kind of had a similar reverence of recognizing that this is a real treasure for them and for where they live, and wanting to find a way to coexist with them.

KILEY PRICE

So where does the dam project stand at the moment?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

It’s been under construction for many years. And you can tell from satellite imagery that it’s nearly complete and could begin operation soon.

KILEY PRICE

This is such a fascinating story because many of the BRI projects, like a hydroelectric dam and China’s EV expansion, aim to make low-emissions technology possible in many parts of the world. But then we hear about how these projects are also harming the environment, like in the case of the orangutans. Can China’s BRI ambitions support a strong environment, or is it ultimately doing more harm than good?

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

There is a real tension there, and I think there’s no simple answer. This is also not unique to the Belt and Road or China’s overseas investment. But one thing that came through in all of our reporting is that the Belt and Road Initiative, it really is a commercial endeavor. You know, this is about making money, generating profits for the corporations that are involved.

And so while China is a leader in clean energy technologies—and its solar panels, its wind turbines, both the ones it’s exporting and the ones increasingly that it’s building overseas, the EVs, these are really actually now reducing global emissions in a measurable way—but when the projects are driven primarily with a profit motive, and also because of the nature of some of these investments, many times environmental regulations are ignored, or they’re operating in countries that have really loose regulations. And you know, the human rights impacts, impacts on local communities, are either ignored or just kind of swept under the rug. 

And so we saw that a lot of these projects can have huge environmental impacts, even as they might be on some other level reducing emissions, for example. So I think what it kind of says is that even for so-called clean energy projects, environmental benefit is not a given. It has to be fought for. There’s civil society groups, there’s communities that are trying to make sure that these projects do ultimately provide a benefit. But as we saw in some of these ones that we’re writing, you know, they’re not always on the winning side.

KILEY PRICE 

Nick, thanks so much for joining us.

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ 

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Final Thought

New York City Climate Week, the world’s largest annual climate event that brings together business, political and civil society leaders to tackle global warming, concluded on Sept. 27.

During the week-long summit, Inside Climate News hosted an event titled, “Planet China: Green Promises, Global Consequences.” It was moderated by reporter Katie Surma, and she spoke to Kate Logan of the Asia Society Policy Institute and Jingjing Zhang of the Center for Transnational Environmental Accountability about China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

KATE LOGAN: So we’re in a very, very different world now, you know, where on the one hand there have been a lot of investments in dirty, polluting sectors, which still exist. But, at the same time, China’s also become the biggest driver of clean technology deployment globally.

The event attracted a diverse audience and it explored the gaps between China’s climate diplomacy and on-the-ground realities.

JINGJING ZHANG: After heavy rain last year, in February, the dam overflowed and made their drinking water highly toxic. 

Stay tuned as Inside Climate News will continue to report on China throughout the coming year.

JAKE BOLSTER

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