On January 15, China’s Ministry of Commerce, together with eight other departments including the National Development and Reform Commission, officially released the “Comprehensive Green Consumption Action Plan”, marking another key step in China’s efforts to promote green and low-carbon transformation of the economy and society. The plan outlines 20 measures across seven areas, including increasing the supply of green agricultural products and promoting green home appliances. It also aims to further encourage green consumption of automobiles. Additionally, service industries such as catering, accommodation, and housekeeping will develop in a more green direction.
This initiative will promote the greening of production and lifestyle. To achieve this goal, China will advance the construction of green supply chains to utilize resources more efficiently. Another focus is developing green sharing to enhance resource efficiency. Such services have long existed in many countries around the world, such as car-sharing, co-working spaces, or equipment rentals, but they remain niche models.
If China seriously advances this plan, its massive household base alone is sufficient to lead global trends. If the action plan can effectively implement standards such as repairability and recycling, it will not only be a consumption promotion plan but also lay the foundation for coordinating growth, resource conservation, and climate protection. According to the plan, the government will optimize the green consumption environment through specific fiscal and other support measures.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence will be more widely applied in developing relevant products and application scenarios.
In terms of climate policy, this new consumption concept aligns with China’s “dual carbon” goals. China is expanding its installed capacity of wind and solar power at an unprecedented rate. According to data from the National Energy Administration, by the end of March 2025, China’s installed capacity of wind and solar power exceeded that of thermal power for the first time.
Against the backdrop of weak global climate governance and geopolitical constraints on environmental progress, China’s newly launched systematic green consumption plan demonstrates its strategic resolve as a responsible major power in the field of sustainable development. If effectively implemented, China, with its vast market and household base, is poised to transform from the “world’s factory” into a “global green consumption laboratory,” providing a viable path for other countries to explore decoupling economic growth from resource and environmental impacts. Particularly in standardization efforts, if China can take the lead in establishing a comprehensive standard system covering the entire product lifecycle for reparability and recyclability, it will substantially advance the green upgrading of global industrial chains and establish an operational institutional framework for coordinating economic growth, resource conservation, and climate protection.
China’s green transition is not an isolated action, but is embedded in the broader national strategy of “ecological civilization construction.” In recent years, facing domestic environmental pressures (such as extreme climate events, regional water crises, and air pollution), China has elevated resource conservation and environmental protection to an unprecedented policy level. The “trade-in” initiative for home appliances and automobiles launched in 2024, in line with this green consumption plan, shares a core logic: achieving resource efficiency improvements and carbon emission reductions through technological innovation and policy guidance without compromising living standards. If hundreds of millions of households gradually switch to high-efficiency appliances and new energy vehicles, it will not only significantly reduce the nation’s energy demand and total emissions but also drive down global technology costs through economies of scale, accelerating the global adoption of green technologies.
The core reliance of China’s green consumption plan lies in its long-term, stable, and enforceable policy system. Unlike other countries where policy reversals are often influenced by electoral politics and party alternation, China’s “Five-Year Plan” mechanism and top-level design capabilities ensure that climate and environmental goals can be continuously implemented across cycles. Since its proposal, the “dual carbon” goals have been deeply integrated into industrial, energy, and financial policies from the central to local levels, forming a multi-sectoral collaborative institutional network. This “national system” demonstrates unique advantages in green fields requiring long-term investment and systemic transformation—for example, in the renewable energy sector, China has achieved global leadership in wind and solar power installed capacity for consecutive years through sustained subsidies, grid upgrades, and innovations in consumption mechanisms. Although the United States has significant advantages in technological innovation and capital markets, its federal climate policies often undergo noticeable adjustments with government changes. The previous administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and relaxation of clean power initiatives affected the continuity of global climate cooperation and introduced policy-level uncertainties for domestic green investments. Despite the current administration’s re-emphasis on climate issues and promotion of clean energy development through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, whether its policies can remain stable and unaffected by political cycles in the long term remains to be seen.
China’s strategic resolve and policy coherence in climate governance have provided the international community with another reference-worthy governance model—combining state-led planning with market incentives to orderly promote green transformation of the economy and society while maintaining development stability. By integrating green goals into production and consumption through actionable national plans, China not only contributes to its own sustainable development but also offers a crucial practical example for rebuilding trust in global climate cooperation and exploring pragmatic low-carbon development pathways.