The growing importance of oil supplies in the context of the failure of domestic sources to satisfy demand and the continuing growth of the economy has meant that the establishment of secure energy supplies has become an issue of central importance to China. China's response has led to substantial debate in the West with some seeing it as part of broader mercantilist move to establish Chinese dominance and others seeing China as attempting to adapt to market forces. Moving away from such debates, this project focuses on the role and capacity of the Chinese state in ensuring energy security. The central argument running through the thesis is that it is not possible to come to terms with Chinese energy policy without acknowledging a central position for the Chinese state. Making this argument involves conceptualising the Chinese state as being located within three different contexts: that is, in the context of domestic political decision-making institutions; in the relational context of domestic political institutions and energy companies; and in the context of its dealings with external structures, namely foreign energy producers and the global market. However, it is also argued that many existing assessments of the Chinese state fail to take sufficient account of its complex and changing role and indeed capacity. As a consequence, it is necessary to view the Chinese state and Chinese energy policy as part of a broader historical process. The thesis suggests that the Chinese state plays three decisive roles in the process of securing energy resources globally: the state as a strategic broker; the state as a business facilitator; and the state as an industry regulator. It also suggests that on the whole, the political capacity of the state to deal with internal and external constraints that arise from its dealings with energy issues can be described in terms of three distinctive modes: authoritative, adaptive and constitutive. Making these suggestions has involved applying a conceptual framework, which consist concepts of 'adaptive state', 'constitutive state' and 'a process of internalisa- tion and internationalisation of the state', drawn from the work of Linda Weiss, John Hobson and Yongjin Zhang. By applying the framework in the context of Chinese energy policy, the thesis demonstrates the virtue of adopting an eclectic approach to the study of the state and provides a persuasive account of the dynamic roles and capacity of the Chinese state exhibited through an evolution of Chinese energy policy.

This thesis explores whether China’s energy security in the era of Hu Jintao underwent a policy paradigm transition from going-out energy diplomacy to global energy governance. Following China’s rapid economic growth, energy security has become a big concern for the country and international cooperation is considered as a strategy to enhance it. In order to promote international energy cooperation and investment, in the late 1990s China adopted its going-out energy diplomacy strategy, which relied on bilateralism. On the other hand, in its two Energy Policy White Papers in 2007 and 2012, China emphasised global energy governance based on multilateralism as a means of maintaining a stable world energy market. While both academia and policymakers have criticised China for taking an aggressive energy diplomacy stance to increase its power in the international system, the Chinese government purports that it will be actively engaged in global energy governance to contribute to global energy security. The above discussion has raised the question of the extent to which China is willing to adjust its bilateral approach to work within a multilateral system. To explain the policy transition, or lack thereof, in China’s energy security strategy during Hu Jintao’s era, this thesis applies Hall’s theory of policy paradigm shift to three case studies: China’s energy cooperation with Central Asia, Europe, and Africa. This thesis argues that despite calls from Chinese authorities for good global energy governance, China’s energy security during Hu Jintao’s era has not yet undergone a paradigm shift away from the policy paradigm of energy diplomacy to a policy paradigm of global energy governance.

China's renewable energy (RE) sector is developing rapidly, driven by growing energy needs, increased awareness of climate change, and heightened concerns for environmental degradation caused by the country's industrialisation process over the past decades. The Chinese government has been dedicated to the development of its RE industry and has engaged extensively in drawing lessons from abroad and applying these lessons to its own experiences in the post transfer learning process to develop policies that have contributed to the development of the largest wind power sector in the world. This thesis provides a perspective of how China, a ‘socialist market economy', has applied primarily market mechanisms from liberalised market systems found in Western Europe and the United States to develop its domestic wind power sector. Having similar economic, political and cultural value systems is not necessarily a prerequisite to policy learning; rather policy objective compatibility is a more important criterion when drawing and transferring lessons. The objective of this thesis is to analyse how the policy learning from abroad, policy transfer and the post transfer process has influenced the development of wind power policies in China through the application of a framework to analyse the policies. The framework was specifically developed for this thesis and was largely based on policy learning and policy transfer concepts as well as general learning literature. Using the wind power policies in China as a case study, this thesis identifies elements of policy learning from abroad and examines how transferred policies have been applied in first level policies that are top-level coordinating policies (e.g. mid- to long-term strategies and frameworks) as well as second level policies, with specific objectives focusing on diffusion and adoption (e.g. renewable energy policy instruments). Overall, studying policy learning from abroad, policy transfer and the post transfer process contributes to understanding how learning across political boarders contributes to the domestic policy formation and implementation process.