China’s Third Plenum, an important five-yearly meeting traditionally associated with major economic reforms, concluded on 18 July in Beijing.
Observers have been eagerly anticipating signals from the meeting about the leadership’s plans for economic growth and wider development, including on climate action.
The official readout from the meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party calls on policymakers to pursue a range of relevant reforms.
These include a focus on “high-quality economic development” (高质量发展), as well as “supporting all-around innovation” (支持全面创新) and “deepening reform in ecological conservation systems” (深化生态文明体制改革), among other areas.
It also urges officials to “make concerted efforts to cut carbon emissions” and “actively respond to climate change”. This is the first time carbon emissions have been mentioned in a plenum document.
A key step to achieve this, it adds, is through “improving institutional mechanisms for developing new quality productive forces” (NQPF, 新质生产力).
Since its first appearance in official rhetoric in September last year, this term has featured in Chinese state media in numerous high-level policy documents and commentaries about industrial development and low-carbon growth.
According to Chinese president Xi Jinping, one important element of NQPF is “green development”, which he has described as the “base colour of high-quality development”. In comments made in January 2024, he added that “new quality productivity itself is green productivity” (新质生产力本身就是绿色生产力).
This encapsulates both the development of low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs), and the “green transformation” of the economy.
However, there is significant debate as to whether the concept, which can also be translated as “new productive forces” or “new quality productivity”, will result in concrete policy outcomes and support further development of industries critical to China’s energy transition.
In this article, Carbon Brief unpacks the concepts underpinning new quality productive forces, and what it means for China’s climate, energy and industrial policy.
- What does ‘new quality productive forces’ mean?
- How significant is this for low-carbon development?
- Why is the concept important?
- What does this mean for China’s low-carbon technology industries?
- What are the concerns over NQPF?
- Will NQPF translate into concrete climate policy?
What does ‘new quality productive forces’ mean?
The phrase was first mentioned by Xi during a visit to Heilongjiang province, located in the “rust belt” of northeast China, in 2023.
In January 2024, he further defined it as innovation-led development that creates “a break with traditional economic growth models and development pathways”, resulting in a “high level of technology, efficiency and quality” (高科技、高效能、高质量) as well as an “in-depth transformation and upgrading of industry” (产业深度转型升级).
This has led to a “ubiquitous” focus on innovation across official discussions about NQPF, according to the University of Cambridge-affiliated thinktank Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy.
Unleashing this innovation, according to official interpretations, will lead to a cascade of changes across China’s industrial system – “both technological and institutional” – that will improve China’s advanced manufacturing capabilities.
Nevertheless, innovation and advanced technology are not the only focus. Analysis by the Council on Geostrategy says the framing of NQPF “suggests that, while scientific and technological innovation is essential, [China recognises there] needs also to be deeper reforms of the…economic model”.
Priority areas for reform include the market-based economy; state owned enterprises (SOE); and China’s fiscal, household registration and healthcare systems.
These economic reforms, driven both by “the government’s ‘visible hand’ and the market’s ‘invisible hand’”, are necessary for China’s continuous prosperity, according to the Xinhua Institute, a thinktank affiliated with state news agency Xinhua.
The institute links NQPF with Marxism, arguing this is in line with improving “means of production” – an important force in Marxist theory for production, reform and human development.
Most official explanations of the concept are relatively broad and unspecific. However, low-carbon development is one of the few named priorities.
How significant is this for low-carbon development?
NQPF will provide an “important support for green development”, according to a commentary in the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily, which was reposted on the website of China’s National Energy Administration.
“Protecting the ecological environment is to protect productivity and improving the ecological environment is to develop productivity,” it adds.
Some analysis takes this further. Prof Zhang Yunfei, from the Marxism studies department at Renmin University in Beijing and researcher at its National Institute of Development and Strategy, tells the government-affiliated newspaper China Environment News that NQPF represents a development model specific to China.
This contrasts with “traditional productive forces in Western societies”, or “black productivity” (黑色生产力), which saw “high consumption of resources and energy, and high pollution of the ecological environment”, he says.
Instead, NQPF signifies “green productivity”, which will help China “shift from conforming to leading globalisation, and promote the country’s healthy and green development”.
“Green productivity”, Zhang adds, is sustainable productivity that focuses both on increasingly productive “ecologicalisation” (生态化) and increasingly ecological productive forces driving wider development.
These forces are fundamentally provided by and rooted in nature, he explains. Driving forces include “sustainable resources such as information”, a “new generation of workers” that understand the concept of ecological civilisation and an enhanced “level of sustainable development” based on “green science and technology”.
Why is the concept important?
This concept of NQPF is a holistic approach “designed to address complex, interrelated challenges faced by China and to create a more resilient and dynamic economy that will bring long-term prosperity”, Dr Muyi Yang, senior electricity policy analyst for China from the thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.
Arthur Kroeber, founding partner and head of research at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, tells Carbon Brief that NQPF is “the latest iteration of a long-running trend towards industrial policy, technology and intensive growth”.
This is “essentially a new bottle for old wine”, Kroeber adds. “I think what it does do is emphasise the point that there is a national mission” to build China into a technological superpower.
“It is a big deal”, Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, told Bloomberg, as Xi “putting a stamp” on the idea will “send a powerful signal” to stakeholders across the system.
The idea addresses specific anxieties facing China’s leadership. As well as supporting economic growth, some argue that strengthening the country’s ability to innovate provides China with a greater sense of security.
According to the Chinese Communist party’s leading theoretical journal Qiushi, for example, Xi believes that China is “still reliant on others for some core technologies…our industry is still not strong enough in spite of its size and falls short of excellence…and we face significant pressure in making the transition to green and low-carbon production modes”.
Prof Yao Yang, liberal arts chair professor at the China Center for Economic Research and the National School of Development at Peking University in Beijing, echoes this, writing in a comment for China Daily that the “significance” of the concept is the overarching aim of “laying a solid foundation for the future of the Chinese economy”.
Kroeber tells Carbon Brief that this is also driven, in part, by historical parallels between China’s fear of being cut off from US technological advancements and the rupture with the Soviet Union in the Mao era. He says:
“After the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet advisors who went [to China] to help build steel plants and develop the petrochemical industry, for example, all left. China was left [to develop its economy] on its own…Xi Jinping has drawn a specific connection [to that].”
What does this mean for China’s low-carbon technology industries?
A primary aim of NQPF is to expand “strategic emerging industries” and “nurture future industries”, Deng Zhou, associate research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes in the state-run newspaper China Daily.
“Strategic industries” include “new energy”, “new energy vehicles” and “energy conservation and environmental protection”. Recent analysis for Carbon Brief found that “clean energy” sectors contributed 11.4tn yuan ($1.6tn) to China’s economy in 2023.
“Future industries”, according to a policy document issued in January, include nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, hydrogen, biomass, crystalline silicon solar cells, thin-film solar cells and new energy storage such as batteries, among other areas.
These are “implied to be the major sectoral targets” for the NQPF, according to Kroeber.
In his January speech, Xi said that successful deployment of NQPF requires “accelerating green science and technology innovation…promoting application of advanced green technology…strengthening the green manufacturing industry…growing the green energy industry…[and] developing green and low-carbon industrial and supply chains”.
Much of this will be driven by state-coordinated efforts. China Daily says that efforts to cultivate NQPF “will encourage its centrally administered state-owned enterprises [SOEs] to deploy more resources toward developing strategic emerging industries”.
Kroeber believes that this will lead to “national resources [being] mobilised through a ‘new national system’ (新型举国体制)”.
He tells Carbon Brief that the system is an attempt to “create better coordination mechanisms” between the central and local governments in order to better achieve policy goals, such as through research consortiums focused on technological innovations.
This is inspired by the success of China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry, which benefited both from significant state support and from the emergence of innovative and intensely competitive businesses.
Several commentaries and articles highlight EVs as a key example of NQPF working in practice.
Wang Yiming, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former vice minister of the Development Research Center of the State Council, wrote in the state-sponsored Guangming Daily that “the rapid development of China’s EVs is a vivid case of NQPF, formed by the deep transformation and upgrading of industry”.
Using innovation to foster leading expertise across different industries, China hopes, will allow the country to replicate its achievements in the EV sector in other industries.
For example, a blog post on Yuyuan Tantian, a WeChat account affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV, draws a link between China’s experience in manufacturing LCD televisions and its later success in developing solar technologies, which require similar manufacturing technologies and processes.
Prof Zhang tells China Environment News:
“New quality productive forces are not simply a process of transformation from old productivity to new productivity…It is a qualitative leap in productivity based on the achievements of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, which is characterised by green, intelligent and ubiquitous (绿色、智能、泛在) trends.”
What are the concerns over NQPF?
China’s use of state resources to support strategically important industries, such as EVs, has recently fuelled anxieties about “overcapacity” in some countries.
Both the US and the EU have imposed tariffs on China-made EV imports. The EU’s tariff rate for individual automakers is based on the amount of state subsidies, including R&D grants, that the bloc determined those companies to have received.
There are also concerns around overcapacity domestically. A March Reuters article quoted an anonymous Chinese policy adviser saying: “The direction of promoting tech innovation is right, but my worry is how to achieve it – what path and what institutional mechanisms should we rely on?”
To a point, these concerns are also shared by the leadership. In an article translated by the Pekingology newsletter, Han Wenxiu, a top economic policy planner, cautioned against “campaign-style” implementation of NQPF policies that lead to “neglecting or abandoning traditional industries”, as well as “blind conformity and bubbles”.
Some analysts have linked NQPF to a broader push for faster economic growth and challenges tackling “deep-seated difficulties” in economic reform, which has led to a “lack of more radical action on consumption”.
Michael Pettis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, is quoted by the Financial Times saying that “the exit strategy has to be, at the end of the day, consumption – there’s no point producing all this stuff if no one’s going to buy it”.
But given current tensions with the US, Kroeber tells Carbon Brief, China “can’t rely on imports of technology in the same way…It must have an all-of-nation effort to develop its own alternatives for the technologies it used to import.”
In his view, efforts to foster NQPF “could” lead to the creation of more capacity – although he finds concerns around overcapacity to be overly “politicised”.
He says that any spikes in capacity may be “unintentional” as “the Europeans and Chinese are actually starting discussions on [resolving concerns around] EVs”.
Yang tells Carbon Brief that “innovative technologies are often not commercially viable and struggle to compete with mature technologies in the market”, highlighting the need for government support to make the EV industry viable. He adds:
“The world needs to achieve rapid and deep decarbonisation within a very short timeframe. The market often drives incremental change. But what is required now is more radical, fundamental change.”
Will NQPF translate into concrete climate policy?
At a press conference on 24 June, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) announced that it will release a ‘1+N’ policy on NQPF, which will “promote the accelerated development of NQPF” and “thicken” the “green-ness” of high-quality development (厚植高质量发展的绿色底色).
This followed an article in Qiushi by MEE minister Huang Runqiu and party secretary Sun Jinlong, who wrote that “ecology is itself the economy – if you protect ecology, ecology will give you returns”.
The ‘1+N’ framework is well-established in Chinese environmental policymaking, forming the basis for China’s climate policy.
It refers to “1” policy setting overarching objectives, which guides numerous (“N”) action plans and policy measures that include more concrete targets.
The MEE said that NQPF “can help promote the significant decline of pollutants and carbon emissions, and radically improve the quality of the ecological environment”.
On 11 July, it released one of the first “N” policies in the system – regulations to update “management of ecological environment zoning control”.
Analysis by consulting firm Trivium China questions whether this “will directly contribute” to development of NQPF, but adds that it could signal the MEE “leveraging” the concept to “push through reforms that might otherwise be stymied” by other stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) announced on 17 July that it will establish a centre for promoting NQPF. This may improve MOST’s “autonomy” in policy planning for science and technology innovation, an analyst told finance newspaper 21st Century Business Herald.
Kroeber says that “every document the government comes out with now has to have some reference to NQPF. It’s just a way for bureaucrats to say ‘we have heard the signal [from Beijing] and we are pursuing [those goals]’”.
He adds that one area in which China may issue more concrete policies is power market reform.
China has been trying to “introduce more competition” into its power market to address a range of challenges inherent to the old grid system, including increasing the share of renewable power in overall power generation.
It is “an area where this idea of coordination and the state playing a more leading role in getting everyone to move together” is crucial, Kroeber says, given the importance of access to abundant, low-cost electricity to power development of more technology.
Seeing further progress “would be the litmus test of whether the government is pursuing its aims [around NQPF] in an effective way”, he adds.
However, Yang tells Carbon Brief that while NQPF “has theoretical underpinnings, it is far from being purely conceptual”.
He says: “I believe more actions in various sectors will come soon to translate it into concrete initiatives and programs.”
The post Q&A: What China’s push for ‘new quality productive forces’ means for climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What China’s push for ‘new quality productive forces’ means for climate action
Climate Change
Whale Entanglements in Fishing Gear Surge Off U.S. West Coast During Marine Heatwaves
New research finds that rising ocean temperatures are shrinking cool-water feeding grounds, pushing humpbacks into gear-heavy waters near shore. Scientists say ocean forecasting tool could help fisheries reduce the risk.
Each spring, humpback whales start to feed off the coast of California and Oregon on dense schools of anchovies, sardines and krill—prey sustained by cool, nutrient-rich water that seasonal winds draw up from the deep ocean.
Whale Entanglements in Fishing Gear Surge Off U.S. West Coast During Marine Heatwaves
A new study takes a first-of-its kind look at how farming converts non-forested areas and major carbon sinks into cropland and pasture.
Agriculture is widely known to be the biggest driver of forest destruction globally, especially in sprawling, high-profile ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest.
Grasslands and Wetlands Are Being Gobbled Up By Agriculture, Mostly Livestock
Climate Change
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
-
Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.
NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits