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Mapping Participation Energy, Climate Change and Net Zero in a Chinese Context
Public engagement is central to ensuring that global energy transitions are realised in an effective and just manner. Yet, approaches to participation often reflect particular – Western – assumptions about what good, or meaningful, participation around energy, climate change and net zero transitions looks like. This may obscure other traditional forms of participation and democracy.
China is often characterised as both a major barrier to global energy transitions to net zero, and as an authoritarian country where meaningful public engagement is lacking. Yet, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, and as a global manufacturing centre for the technological innovations necessary for global energy transitions, it is a crucial country in which to examine climate politics.
Using relational otherness, which sees participation as contingent, contextual and created through practice, this research maps public engagement with energy, climate change and net zero in a Chinese context. Alongside a range of complementary methods, this research suggests that Chinese publics are engaged with energy transitions in a multitude of ways, and that framings of energy, climate and net zero, are more diverse than cases of participation mapped in western contexts. This supports the identification and description of a broader constitution of energy participation in both China and globally. These findings in turn will support the recognition of diverse energy-future imaginaries, which in turn may help shape future trajectories of energy transitions.