The following excerpt is from an op-ed written by Kate Logan, Director of the China Climate Hub and Climate Diplomacy and Fellow, Center for China Analysis, and published in Dialogue Earth.

In November 2024, China made a landmark move at the UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan when vice premier Ding Xuexiang portrayed China’s international finance as a form of climate finance. His statement, and China’s subsequent actions, represented an evolution of China’s long-held stance in UN climate negotiations.

Six months on, with Donald Trump again pulling the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and taking a hatchet to various climate-related funding mechanisms – as well as launching an all-out trade war – China’s positioning of itself as a non-traditional climate finance contributor is even more significant for the future of global climate action.

The country’s incentives for shifting its stance, and the potential implications of this for other Global South emitters, are central to the future of climate politics. And beyond traditional modes of finance, China’s cleantech leaders – most of which are private companies – are investing abroad at an even greater scale, including in new production capacity. Understanding these dynamics may present opportunities to trigger greater ambition in the face of ongoing threats to global climate action and the clean-energy transition.

Read the full op-ed here.