China: Anchor of stability in global energy governance

Since late February, tensions in the Middle East have continued to escalate, and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has increasingly spilled over, pushing global energy issues once again to the center of international political economy. On the surface, this is a crisis revolving around maritime routes, oil and gas transport, and regional security. Further analysis reveals that it reflects the profound pressures bearing down on the global energy governance order: market mechanisms squeezed by security logic, open flows constrained by geopolitical confrontations, and multilateral coordination weakened by unilateral coercion.

The Strait of Hormuz is not an isolated geographic node, but rather a mirror through which the shifting world energy order can be observed.

Global Energy Governance Enters Phase of Turbulence and Adjustments

The energy issue has never been merely one of resource supply and demand. It connects economic growth, social operations, industrial systems, and financial markets, while also bearing on national security, public livelihoods, and green transition. Once a critical route is disrupted, the impact does not remain confined to oil price fluctuations alone; rather, it cascades layer by layer through shipping, insurance, finance, industrial chains, and public expectations. What warrants vigilance today is not the fact that energy has security attributes, but that some countries are incorporating transport corridors, resource supplies, technological standards, critical minerals, and green industrial chains into an exclusionary security framework.

In the past, although energy always had strategic dimensions, it generally operated through market transactions and international division of labor. Nowadays, route control, financial settlement, sanctions lists, insurance rates, technological barriers, and regulatory exclusion are increasingly overlapping with each other. Energy is increasingly being used as a tool for strategic pressure and order reconstruction. The fragility of the energy system is an objective reality, but the weaponization of energy is a political choice. It not only raises the institutional costs for all countries in accessing energy, but also places developing nations under greater pressure between energy security and green transition.

This also makes clear that the old foundations of global energy governance are loosening. For a considerable period in the past, the international energy system relied largely on open markets, route security, and regulatory expectations to maintain basic stability. That system was neither perfect nor entirely equitable, but it at least provided some institutional buffer for energy flows. Today, as sanctions have become more widespread, exclusionary rules, and the securitization of trade instruments continue to spread, governance mechanisms originally designed to reduce uncertainty are increasingly unable to withstand the shocks of political conflict. Market openness is being eroded, route security politicized, and price signals distorted by strategic expectations. As a result, global energy governance has entered a more turbulent phase of adjustment.

However, crisis does not signify only disorder—it also signifies restructuring. The Strait of Hormuz crisis reminds the world that future energy governance cannot remain confined to military escort, short-term price adjustments and crisis response. Instead, it must shift toward a new logic that prioritizes systemic resilience, capacity building, green transition, and multilateral coordination. What the world needs is not to further turn energy into a bargaining chip for geopolitical competition, but to build more stable linkages between energy security and climate governance. What it needs is not to create more closed "small circles," but to provide participatory, affordable, and sustainable transition pathways for countries at different stages of development. It is in this sense that China's stabilizing role in global energy governance becomes even more pronounced.

China’s Stabilizing Role Becomes Even More Pronounced

The reason China has been able to serve as an anchor of stability in global energy governance lies first and foremost in its provision of a governance philosophy distinct from zero-sum games and bloc confrontation. Facing the complex interplay of energy security, climate change, and development rights, China does not simply understand energy as a power game of control and counter-control. Instead, it adheres to common security, green development, mutually beneficial cooperation, and harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature. China advocates the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, promotes the implementation of the "Global Development Initiative", "Global Security Initiative", "Global Civilization Initiative", and "Global Governance Initiative", emphasizes the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries in energy transition, and opposes turning green transition into new political barriers. Such a philosophy is not an abstract slogan, but an important precondition for reopening space for cooperation in a turbulent world.

The solid foundation of China's stabilizing role also comes from its continuously enhanced capacity for energy transition and green industrial development. By the end of 2025, China’s renewable energy installed capacity reached 2.34 billion kilowatts, accounting for approximately 60% of the country's total power generation capacity. The combined installed capacity of wind and solar power reached 1.84 billion kilowatts, historically surpassing thermal power. More importantly, China's green transition is not a matter of isolated breakthroughs but is driven by the coordinated advancement of wind power, photovoltaics, energy storage, power grids, electric vehicles, and green manufacturing. China with a mega-scale market, a complete industrial system, and sustained innovation capability is no longer just a recipient of fluctuations in the global energy market, but also a major supplier of global green transition capacity. This capacity is particularly important for the world today.

As uncertainties in traditional oil and gas routes rise, expanding clean energy supply, enhancing power system resilience, and accelerating end-use electrification are not just climate governance issues, but also energy security issues. The development of China's new energy industry has reduced the cost of applying green technologies globally, enriched the energy transition options for developing countries, and provided a new source of stability for the global energy system. It can be said that China's contribution to global energy governance is reflected not only in its positions and initiatives, but also in the tangible support in such forms as equipment, technology, industrial chains, markets, and development experience.

At the same time, China's constructive role in global energy governance is steadily expanding. China persists in advancing climate and energy cooperation within multilateral frameworks, actively participates in global climate governance processes, promotes the development of a green "Belt and Road", deepens South-South cooperation, and supports developing countries in enhancing their clean energy capacity and climate resilience. This is particularly critical at present. What global energy governance lacks most is not grand statements, but cooperative platforms that can link security rights, development rights and transition rights. What it needs most is not to create exclusion in the name of rules, but to enable more countries to have the capacity, opportunity, and benefits in the green transition. What China provides is precisely such a more inclusive cooperation path that prioritizes shared development.

However, the rise of China's role does not automatically translate into leadership in global energy governance. In the period ahead, unilateralism, energy weaponization, and green protectionism will continue to affect the international energy order. As China plays a greater role, it will also face external constraints and discursive competition. The more this is the case, the more we need to maintain strategic focus, further transform the scale advantages of our own energy transition into systemic advantages, cooperative advantages, and the capacity to shape rules, expand consensus through open cooperation, consolidate security through green development, and stabilize expectations through multilateral coordination.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis is a stress test. It tests not only the fragility of energy routes, but also whether global energy governance can maintain basic order under the impact of conflict, and, more importantly, whether major powers are creating division or providing stability. In the face of the securitization, weaponization, and governance imbalance of energy, the truly promising path is not closure, confrontation and exclusion, but responding to risks with cooperation, shaping the future with transition, and consolidating security with development.

The rougher the seas, the more vital the anchor's role. The significance of China as an anchor of stability in global energy governance lies precisely in its continuous provision of precious stability, certainty, and space for cooperation to an uncertain world.

Contributed by Yu Hongyuan, Researcher at Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Distinguished Professor at Tongji University

Translated by Cai Shiying