Mathias Larsen and Xue Xiaokang demonstrate how Chinese investments are changing global green supply chains, drawing out policy implications for host countries and international partners.

An acceleration in overseas investment by Chinese green technology manufacturers is reshaping the global clean-tech landscape. Chinese manufacturers have become pivotal actors in this sector, building battery, solar-PV, wind turbine, and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing plants across the world. Tracking this industrial footprint is increasingly essential for assessing the social, economic and environmental consequences of China’s role in global supply chains. In this commentary we describe a new database that provides a rigorous empirical basis for such assessments, and provide preliminary analysis of key trends, drawing on our new policy brief.

Illuminating trends through a new database

The China Low Carbon Technology FDI Database, initiated in early 2025, catalogues 461 green-tech manufacturing projects announced between 2011 and the first half of 2025. The database is a preliminary part of the broader Global Low Carbon Technology FDI database, hosted by NZIPL at Johns Hopkins University and the GDP Center at Boston University. The 11 low-carbon technology types in the new China database are: batteries, battery materials, charging infrastructure, electric buses, electric motorcycles, green hydrogen, new energy vehicles (NEVs), NEV parts, solar, storage and wind. Projects are mapped by year, country, clean-tech type, company, investment scale, production capacity and project status.

By harmonising disparate open-source datasets with manual verification, the database offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date mapping of Chinese green-tech manufacturing investment overseas. Its temporal, geographical and sectoral granularity enables researchers to trace financing waves, identify emerging hubs and evaluate how the timing and composition of Chinese manufacturing commitments shape development outcomes.

The combined databases, once made public in early 2026, will allow policymakers, financiers and researchers to track these dynamics and assess how China’s industrial choices reshape the global decarbonisation landscape.

Preliminary trends identified

By analysing the dataset, we identify several dynamics:

• Investment volume: Chinese firms have pledged at least US$227 billion across green manufacturing projects. A high-end estimate approaches US$250 billion.
• Post-2022 acceleration: Investments started to surge in 2022, with 387 projects – more than 80% of the total – launched since that year. A record 165 projects were announced in 2024 alone. Since 2022, Chinese firms have committed over US$210 billion, accounting for approximately 88% of total disclosed capital.
• Sector diversification: Solar dominated pre-COVID, but since 2021, capital has fanned out to battery materials, full battery plants, NEVs, charging equipment, wind and early-stage green hydrogen.
• Regional rebalancing: The ASEAN countries still host the most projects, but 2024 saw the share in the Middle East and North Africa jump to over 20% of new deals. Europe remains key for downstream batteries, while the share of projects in Latin America and Central Asia also increased.
• Hot spots include: Indonesia for nickel-rich battery-material projects and new solar lines; Morocco for cathodes and green-hydrogen for EU supply chains; the Gulf States for solar module and electrolyser manufacturing, backed by sovereign offtakes; and Hungary, Spain, Brazil and Egypt as sector-specific hubs for batteries, hydrogen or a mix of technologies.
• Geographical distribution: Investment motivations can be categorised into three types: seeking access to host countries’ markets, third-country markets or raw material inputs.
• Megaprojects: Chinese investments include 60 projects exceeding US$1 billion.

The investment numbers for 2025 suggest a stagnation, however. Project counts are likely to plateau below the 2024 record as firms digest a pipeline of megaprojects and hedge against geopolitical risk. Light-asset strategies – technology licensing, contract manufacturing and OEM [original equipment manufacturer] deals – are spreading from EV makers to battery and solar firms, allowing Chinese champions to preserve market access without large fixed-asset bets. This shift may temper headline construction numbers, yet the underlying commercial reach of Chinese technology is set to expand.

Policy implications beyond China

For host governments receiving Chinese FDI, the data highlight the need for policies to take into account several dynamics:

• Incentives should be tailored to specific sectors. Capital-intensive battery materials and hydrogen plants respond to tax holidays, concessional land and long-term finance; solar and NEV assembly lines react more quickly to local-content rules and offtake guarantees.
• Resource endowments should be leveraged to maximise negotiation power. Countries with critical minerals, abundant renewables or large consumer markets can anchor themselves in China-centric supply chains – provided they secure technology transfer, environmental safeguards and local-value addition clauses.
• A rapid scale-up requires planning. Megaprojects exceeding US$1 billion are becoming the norm. Ensuring grid, port and skills infrastructure keeps pace will determine whether these investments catalyse broad-based industrial upgrading or remain enclaves.
• Involving international partners. Understanding the geographical focus, timing and sectoral tilt of China’s outward manufacturing drive is essential for calibrating trade policy, supply-chain resilience programmes and climate finance initiatives. These dynamics are essential to understand for both international partners and the host countries dealing with these.

Looking forward

The trends identified here suggest that China is changing global clean-tech manufacturing supply chains. As most projects have commenced within the past two years, many will become fully operational in 2025 and 2026. This entails a massive increase in the production of clean technologies outside China, a dynamic that will likely play a key role in disseminating green technologies globally and increasing the buy-in from host countries in scaling up the application of the technologies. The dynamics are, however, still not well understood. We have outlined the underlying phenomenon; the public release next year of the database in its entirety will support deeper understanding. Producing the research necessary to understand the implications of Chinese investments must be a collaborative effort involving people and organisations across borders. We therefore invite and encourage interested stakeholders to use the dataset to participate in this endeavour.

‘China’s Green Leap Outward: The rapid scale-up of overseas Chinese clean-tech manufacturing investments’ by Xiaokang Xue and Mathias Larsen was published in September 2025 by the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.