Structural Change and Energy Policy in the 13th Five-Year-Plan on the example of the Inner Mongolia
Event Reports
“A good conversation never ends.” With these words Tim Wenniges and Thomas Awe, heads of the KAS offices in Shanghai and Beijing, opened the 19th meeting of the former KAS-scholarship holders. For more than 20 years this dialogue with the former scholarship holders, who are essentially contributing to the foundation's work with their diverse experiences, continues on. This year’s talks were held in the context of “Structural change and energy policy in the 13th Five-Year-Plan on the example of the Inner Mongolia” in Baotou.
In his speech Frank Priess, deputy head of the Main Department European and International Cooperation, dealt with the challenges for the KAS engagement worldwide before moving on to a discussion with everyone present about the foundations work in China up to now as well as in the future.
The first lecture by Prof. Dr. Jakhadai Chimeddorji of the University of Inner Mongolia focused on the role of the autonomous region in Chinese energy and resource politics. Thanks to the rich occurrence of coal, steel and rare earth metals also in the Bayan-Obo-Mines near Baotou the region emerged to an important industrial center. Thus processes of change in the areas of migration, urbanization and pollution increasingly come into the attention of the central government. With active promotion of renewable energies Beijing aims to make use of the wind and sun capacities of the region to sustainably guarantee the countries energy security.
Dr. Peter Hefele, head of the KAS regional program for energy security and climate change in Asia-Pacific, identified Chinas way to a sustainable energy system in the increasing separation of energy consumption and economic growth. The requirements of restructuring also of the German energy system can serve as a foundation for deeper cooperation especially when it comes to the implication of small technological solutions in China that are closer to the energy demand and easier to manage than the large-scale projects of the central government so far. However more efficiency in energy consumption can only be reached with the help of the entrepreneurship and the civil societies.
A following visit to the steelwork of the Baogang group emphasized the company’s awareness of the need for industrial reforms in order to tackle local environment issues but also to ensure sustainable security of the energy supply nationwide.
The conference concluded with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Maximilian Mayer of the Tongji University in Shanghai on energy policy aspects in the “One Belt, One Road”-initiative: The distribution of resource dependencies among as many countries as possible was successfully realized in the Chinese energy strategy so far. Securing the transportation routes for these resources is one key component of the so called Silk Road project, which is to provide infrastructure investments for the establishment of a logistics and transportation channel from China to Europe. According to Prof. Dr. Mayer the Peoples Republic will increasingly have to face internal conflicts of the countries on the road, which would stand in contrast to the Chinese policy of nonintervention so far.
Provided by
Foundation Office China
About this series
The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, its educational institutions, centres and foreign offices, offer several thousand events on various subjects each year. We provide up to date and exclusive reports on selected conferences, events and symposia at www.kas.de. In addition to a summary of the contents, you can also find additional material such as pictures, speeches, videos or audio clips.