How China's high-tech green transition improves people's livelihood

Editor's note: Hannan Hussain, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a Fulbright recipient at the University of Maryland, the U.S., and a former assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

China's pursuit of high-quality development is informed by a range of diverse growth drivers. The pivot towards high-tech green industries is a significant game-changer for its future economic landscape.

Look no further than China's solar photovoltaics, which are the subject of increased solar expansion plans and rapid capacity creation in the world's second-largest economy. Power generation capacity shot up by nearly 55 percent last year, with more than 216 gigawatts of solar power added to drive transformative industrial production and secure sustainability.

These figures from the National Energy Agency underline the ironclad commitments from the Chinese state to leverage green technologies as a growth engine. State support and a conducive regulatory environment have been chief to improving industrial access to high-value renewables, ensuring that the country meets some of its 2030 green energy capacity targets several years in advance.

It is a fact that China puts a premium on high-quality development to spur economic growth. At present, its swift transition towards high-tech green industries is key to transforming conditions for people-centric development, including through massive gains in cutting-edge lithium-ion batteries and new energy vehicles. In terms of the former, year-on-year output shot up by 25 percent, and continued innovation gains are likely to accelerate China's transition towards high-tech development. Without a doubt, China's multipronged pivot towards green industries is critical to further improving the livelihoods of the Chinese masses.

Innovation from the ground up is an important policy consideration that can bolster Beijing's high-quality development goals in the long run. A case in point is the transformative application of high-tech green industries to efficient land management and food security use. At present, China serves as the food basket for about 20 percent of the world's population and is keen to ramp up its amount of land access to widen food supply chains domestically and globally. Those aspirations stand complimented through high-tech industrial applications which can signal a shift in skilled labor capacities, and provide buffers against any potential shortage of land, food, or other critical resources within the country. All in all, these advantages are geared towards ensuring continuous improvement in people's living standards and livelihoods.

Finally, a promising growth frontier for China's high-tech green industrial development is the new energy vehicles (NEV) front. Recent progress is impossible to ignore: China has occupied the top spot globally in NEV sales for the past nine years and enjoys a global market share that stands in excess of the 60 percent mark. The demonstrated leadership in this field can enable Chinese cities to benefit from electric mobility. In turn, this effectively limits the carbon footprint on a major scale, while NEVs provide robust incentives to expand China's new energy industry.

Greater investments in these sectors provide major incentives to both local and foreign enterprises to treat China as a melting pot for green industry progress, given the massive scale of manufacturing in the country and its ability to command research and innovation heft. "Efforts should be made to strengthen joint research on core technologies in key fields, strengthen the transformation and application of scientific research achievements, and cultivate energy technology and its related industries into new growth points to drive China's industrial upgrading and promote the development of new quality productive forces," stressed Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.

Ultimately, high-tech green industries and their growing contribution to China's economic growth underline massive imperatives for a transformative future. It shows that high-tech industries have an indispensable role in propelling China's pivot towards high-quality development while ensuring that its people are the chief beneficiaries of improved livelihoods and sustainable resource access.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)