On PBS, John Kerry praised China as the world leader in renewable energy. Speaking to host Christiane Amanpour, he said:
“Well, I think, Christiane, that it’s really unfortunate that the president who wants to compete with China and who constantly talks about China beating us in the marketplace has actually ceded the largest market in the world to China. The fact is that China today is racing ahead in responding to the climate crisis because their citizens want them to, and because it’s commercially extremely lucrative. So in China, over the last four or five years, they have actually manufactured and deployed more renewable energy than all of the rest of the world put together. And they command the entire marketplace with respect to the supply chain on solar panels, wind turbines, etc.”
He added:
“…while we have a different president, the science hasn’t changed. The science that drove the world to say we have to reduce emissions, we have to transition away from fossil fuel is not, you know, at all what is being pursued by this administration and, frankly, by some other countries in the world.”
Kerry paints China as the climate leader, but the Communist Party drives renewables for profit and global power — not because citizens demanded it, and certainly not out of environmental concern.
Yes, China has rapidly expanded solar and wind, but it has also accelerated coal production at a historic pace. In 2023 alone, China permitted more new coal-fired plants than the entire world combined. Coal still powers more than half the country, and China’s emissions continue to rise.
As for the claim that it’s “commercially lucrative”? That part is closer to the truth — but not in the way Kerry frames it. China’s renewable buildout isn’t about saving the planet; it’s about cornering the global market and making billions off Western countries that buy cheap green tech made with low-paid labor — a hypocrisy their leaders refuse to admit. Meanwhile, to fuel its own economy, China keeps breaking coal consumption records.
And Kerry’s line that “the science hasn’t changed” is misleading. Much of what he calls science is really computer models and predictions — uncertain, unproven, and often wrong. Real science questions itself. But Kerry treats forecasts as facts, selling them as settled truth to justify shutting down American energy while ignoring that China, the world’s top polluter, is expanding fossil fuels at record pace.
Kerry’s soundbite makes China look like a green-energy saint — a dictatorship that supposedly “listens to its people” — while America looks like the laggard. In reality, Beijing plays both sides: mass-producing renewables for export while burning more coal than ever at home.
China fuels its factories with coal to corner the green market, but Democrats won’t let America build because coal isn’t “clean.” They block new coal plants outright, shut down pipelines, and stall LNG export projects — yet they applaud China’s “green” products made with coal. The hypocrisy is hard to miss.