Securitizing the Green Transition? Renewable Energy Discourses and Critical Mineral Control in Xi Jinping’s New Era of China

Abstract

With increasing geopolitical tensions between China, the EU, and the USA, the green transition in the energy industry has become highly competitive. Access to critical minerals is crucial for a sustainable and affordable transition. As China leads in renewable energy (RE) installations and controls significant supply chains, a deeper understanding of its strategic and political discourse is necessary. This thesis provides insights into China's renewable energy discourse and examines its strategies, policies, and framing on ensuring supply chains for critical minerals in manufacturing renewable energy applications. The thesis performs a discourse analysis of over 80 key Chinese government documents (between 2002-2024), revealing RE transition is constituted in three main discourses: green transition and ecological China, energy security, and innovation and high-tech economy. The securitization framework highlights specific security grammar and opens the discussion of how security is constituted through words over time. China’s political discourse reflects goals and initiatives to enhance China into becoming a green, low-carbon and harmonious society. However, this thesis main argument is that the discourse for China’s green transition of energy has been framed as something not to be rushed, and RE applications are rather prioritized within discourses for China’s goals to of becoming a high-tech innovative distributor. China’s discourse from 2023-2024 give clear goals of prioritizing self-reliance initiatives to face future protectionist advancements from the west. The overall conclusion is that critical minerals have had an increase of securitizing language, specifically in support of new exploration of minerals and export controls.