Show Notes
Does China’s unique party-state capitalist political economy model hold the key for global climate transition? Can the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) translate its success in expanding green energy technology to the destruction of the fossil fuel industry? What does China’s idea of ecological civilisation offer that Western notions of green capitalism do not? How should activists in the West respond to the rise of China amid the climate crisis?
Chris Saltmarsh is a postgraduate researcher at University of Sheffield and the executive producer of SPERI Presents… He joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss his paper ‘The Chinese Road to Decarbonisation: Chinese Party-State Capitalism in the Political Economy of Fossil Energy Phase-Out’ recently published in Review of International Political Economy. They discuss the relationship between green energy build-out and fossil energy phase-out; the basis of China’s development in socialist revolution; whether China’s unique political economy affords it greater potentiality to phase-out fossil fuels; and both the practical challenges and theoretical implications of achieving such an undertaking.
Publications discussed also include Cheek’s Xi Jinping’s Counter-Reformation: The Reassertion of Ideological Governance in Historical Perspective, Ban and Hasselbalch’s Green economic planning for rapid decarbonisation, Gabor and Braun’s Green macrofinancial regimes, Huber’s Theorizing the subterranean mode of production, and Malm’s Fossil Capital.
'New Thinking in Political Economy' is a monthly podcast showcasing cutting-edge political economy research that helps us to understand the world around us.
This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Remi Edwards and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from SPERI Presents...
Why do states carry on extracting fossil fuels amid climate collapse? Why have some pledged to phaseout fossil fuels over the next few decades? Why are supply-side policies important? What will the coming decades of energy politics looks like?
What actually is an electrostate? How do the material substances of electricity and fossil fuels shape state power? Is the US a petrostate and does this question expose the flimsiness of the concept? When we talk about electrostates, do we really just mean China?
Why has the Global South been peripheralized in the study of international political economy (IPE)? What does this cause us to miss in our scholarship? How are sovereignties and power dynamics produced in the Global South? How should teaching IPE change?
How is value constructed and contested in the wine industry? What is the significance of place and nature? What does the win industry tell us about capitalist production in general?
How should we understand the ruptural shift of the second China shock? How does it effect what we thought we knew about China and global production? How can we study this transformation? What comes next?