From Pledges to Plants? Rightsizing China’s Global Clean Tech Investment

Executive summary

China has emerged as a major global clean tech investor, but the lack of robust data complicates analysis. Rhodium Group’s new China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard provides detailed data on both announced and completed foreign direct investment (FDI) by Chinese companies abroad across the electric vehicle (EV), solar photovoltaic (PV), and wind turbine value chains. The highlights are:

• Chinese outbound FDI in clean tech is growing but not as large as the headlines suggest: Loose tallies of deal announcements suggest that Chinese companies have invested close to $400 billion overseas since 2014. We estimate that the value of announced Chinese FDI projects in clean technology sectors is closer to $173 billion. Most importantly, only about half of those commitments ($85 billion) have materialized so far.
• China’s overseas manufacturing footprint is growing but exports remain the dominant mode for serving overseas markets: While localization is progressing, more than 90% of manufacturing investment of Chinese clean tech firms since 2021 took place inside China’s borders. Overseas investment remains tilted toward securing upstream resources and sustaining access to key overseas markets for booming exports.
• Trade barriers are a major driver of Chinese FDI: The rise of tariffs and other trade barriers has been a major factor spurring investment in offshore manufacturing capacity. In solar PV, Chinese companies first invested in Vietnam and Malaysia but have recently shifted to Ethiopia and the Philippines as trade defense measures caught up. In EVs, tariffs have recently pushed Chinese car makers toward local assembly in Europe, Turkey, and Thailand. But if barriers become too intense, they can cause Chinese companies to drop out of markets: In the US, 60% of announced Chinese EV FDI has been canceled.
• The evidence on the local impact of Chinese clean tech investments is mixed: The track record of Chinese clean tech investments abroad is short as most major facilities are either still under construction or in early stages of operation. There are examples of successful investments that have invigorated new industry clusters but also data points that support concerns about weak labor standards, increasing supply chain dependence on inputs from China, and the crowding out of local firms.
• China’s global clean tech FDI will remain volatile: Chinese clean tech firms continue to have strong incentives to expand abroad but face a complex political economy. Beijing is moving to further tighten its grip over outbound investment to limit the leakage of technology and create economic statecraft leverage. Host countries are expanding their defensive toolkits through investment reviews, industrial policies, supply chain security measures and new conditionality rules. China’s FDI expansion will remain piecemeal and gradual rather than a “green-energy tsunami.”

Introduction

China has emerged as a major global investor in clean energy technologies.¹ Over the past decade, Chinese companies have aggressively invested in the production of clean energy technologies, bringing down prices and accelerating the global deployment of related goods.

China has also ramped up overseas investment in clean tech infrastructure and manufacturing, creating hopes that Chinese capital could rapidly accelerate the buildout of low-carbon infrastructure and clean tech manufacturing clusters. The initial wave of China’s low-carbon overseas capital mostly consisted of government finance and policy bank lending to relevant infrastructure and upstream assets, especially in middle income economies and countries associated with Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. Since 2021, Chinese clean tech firms have stepped up outbound FDI, eliciting enthusiasm about the prospects of a “green energy tsunami” of private capital from China.

While decarbonization enthusiasm is real, there are concerns about Chinese capital that are rooted in the unique configuration of China’s economic and political system. China’s economic system has produced rampant overcapacity across clean tech sectors, and FDI could accelerate the spillover of subsidies and other market distortions. Moreover, Beijing continues to control capital outflows by private firms, which creates unique concerns about economic statecraft and national security implications. Changing domestic politics have also contributed to boom and bust cycles of Chinese FDI in the past two decades. These factors have led many governments to strengthen foreign investment reviews and design new regimes to reduce negative spillovers and ensure local benefits from Chinese FDI.

In the absence of robust government statistics, policymakers around the world must make important decisions about the right balance between maximizing opportunities and minimizing risk associated with Chinese investment without adequate data. Alternative datasets have become crucial to create transparency on the size, patterns, and impacts of Chinese outbound investment globally. Rhodium Group’s China Cross-Border Monitor (CBM) tracks China’s global outbound FDI across industries using rigorous and consistent methodologies developed over more than two decades. Our new China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard provides structured data on both announced and completed outbound FDI by Chinese companies across the three most important clean tech value chains: EVs, wind turbines, and solar PV.

This report presents data for 2014 through the end of 2025, with a focus on trends since 2021. Future updates will be available on the China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard. Complementary data on China’s global outbound FDI in other sectors is available on the China Cross-Border Monitor. Rhodium Group’s Clean Investment Monitor (CIM) provides complementary, quarterly-updated data on global clean tech investment by country, with future updates including detailed information on cross-border investment flows, the relative importance of foreign investors across economies, and project-level investment status and trends.

1. Total investment: Smaller than headlines suggest

Government statistics on China’s global outbound FDI in clean tech sectors are not available. China’s official figures on overseas FDI by Chinese companies are heavily distorted by the country’s unique external economic configuration and shortcomings in its statistical data collection and provide no sectoral breakdown that would allow for isolating investment in clean technology value chains. Statistics by host economy governments are similarly distorted since they collect data on balance of payments principles, suffer from major time lags, and do not offer breakdowns by sector.²

Alternative trackers produced by think tanks and open-source researchers have been an indispensable resource to better understand Chinese outbound FDI. However, these efforts differ greatly in scope and methodology, resulting in very different estimates. First, alternative datasets often do not separate FDI from other types of investments (lending or portfolio flows) and sometimes mix it with construction contracts or even more abstract measures of “engagement.” Second, data collection efforts use different definitions for sectors or value chains. Some datasets include the full values of upstream investments, even though those minerals are used for a range of products rather than exclusively clean tech. Third and most importantly, most datasets apply different definitions and thresholds for counting announced investment and do not track transactions through the entire lifecycle to capture their progress and eventual completion.

Rhodium Group’s China Clean Tech Investment Dashboard was designed to provide high quality data on both announced and completed Chinese outbound FDI in clean technology value chains. Figure 1 shows three different measures of Chinese outbound FDI in three clean tech sectors in the past decade: An expansive approach that counts announced investments along the entire value chain at full value gets us to almost $400 billion of Chinese clean tech FDI. Applying a more conservative estimation method that only includes announced transactions that meet certain thresholds (like signed memoranda of understanding or legally binding documents) and pro-rates upstream investments to clean tech end-use results in less than half that amount ($173 billion). Most importantly, counting only realized or completed investment cuts that number in half again: Only $85 billion of Chinese clean tech FDI projects have been realized in the past decade.

Plotting both announced and completed FDI along a timeline illustrates that the gap is attributable to the long investment timelines typical of these technologies, as well as the cancelation, suspension, or scaling back of projects as Chinese investors adjust their capital expenditures to market and political realities. Chinese firms announced a raft of capital-intensive greenfield projects around the globe in 2022 and 2023, but actual investment expenditures have been lower and steadier (Figure 2).

Much of the growth in China’s announced overseas clean tech investment has been driven by investment in EV value chains, which has reached $108 billion since 2021, or 79% of the total (Figure 3). Solar PV followed at $25 billion (18% of total) as Chinese firms responded to higher tariffs and increased overseas demand. Announced FDI in both the EV and solar sectors has declined since 2023. Wind turbine manufacturing has only recently entered the picture, with announced investment surpassing $1 billion for the first time in 2024.

On a completed basis, the distribution over the past five years is similar: 74% EV, 25% solar, and 2% wind. Completed EV investment has risen steadily since 2022, while solar has stagnated at around $4 billion annually. This dominance is set to deepen: Only 45% of announced EV investment has been completed so far, compared to 61% for solar PV.

2. Electric vehicles: Battery investment slows, midstream localization pressure mounts

Chinese FDI in the EV value chain historically focused on acquiring raw material assets in resource-rich emerging economies (Argentina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Indonesia), alongside strategic acquisitions of EV and battery manufacturers in high-income economies. Investment began expanding midstream toward the end of the 2010s, led by CATL’s plant in Germany in 2018, the first large-scale Chinese battery facility built overseas. Upstream investment remained modest despite a gradual transition toward mineral refining, driven by surging mineral demand and tightening local refining requirements (Figures 4 and 5).

The 2022–2023 period marked an inflection point. Announced investment surged to an average of $33 billion annually, driven by battery manufacturing. Europe captured more than half of the total, followed by Asia (19%) and North America (16%). This investment boom coincided with a surge in Chinese EV and battery exports as well as growing trade frictions and localization requirements (Figure 7 and 8). Yet FDI remained a secondary mode of expansion: More than 90% of EV investment by Chinese companies over the past decade has stayed in China, meaning foreign markets have been served overwhelmingly through exports rather than local production (Figure 6).

Since then, announced investment levels have moderated to around $15 billion per year, and completed investment has finally caught up, reaching a record $17 billion in 2025. The composition has shifted however: EV manufacturing and battery materials have overtaken battery cells as the leading investment categories, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia are displacing Europe as primary destinations. Chinese companies are also losing interest in the US market, with 60% of announced investment now canceled. But while new announcements have waned, completed investment has continued apace as local manufacturing becomes an increasingly important market entry requirement. By 2025, about 45% of total announced outbound investment had been completed.

3. Solar PV: Always one step ahead of tariffs

Chinese FDI in solar PV manufacturing grew modestly through the mid-2010s. US and EU trade defense measures pushed Chinese firms to relocate module assembly to Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand. Overseas investment remained relatively low through 2018 before surging in 2019 and again from 2022 onward. Each wave closely followed new rounds of foreign trade barriers, and investment shifted toward Indonesia and Laos as earlier Southeast Asian hubs came under greater scrutiny (Figure 10).

From 2023, announced investment levels nearly tripled compared to the previous five years, rising from an average of $2 billion to $7 billion annually, driven by new rounds of tariffs and increased overseas demand. This surge coincided with a boom in Chinese domestic solar investment, peaking at around $120 billion, and a near-doubling of exports. As domestic margins compressed and trade barriers increased, manufacturers pushed for overseas investment: The share of overseas investment in total announced Chinese solar investment rose from just 4% in 2020–2023 to nearly 20% in the past two years (Figure 11). Chinese exports of solar PV equipment continued to grow but the collapse in prices led to declining exports in value terms (Figure 12).

Chinese overseas investment also shifted in composition. New local content requirements drove up investment in midstream segments—for example, silicon wafers—to around 60% of announced investment. Upstream FDI edged up to nearly 10% as rising polysilicon prices incentivized overseas production (Figure 9). Geographically, investment diversified as manufacturers sought to reduce tariff exposure and secure market access. MENA emerged as the largest destination from 2023 onward, accounting for 37% of total announced investment. Only around a quarter has been completed to date though, reflecting the high degree of uncertainty around announcements in the region, particularly in Gulf economies. The US captured close to a quarter of announced investment over the past three years, partly driven by access to local subsidies, but most large announced investments have since been delayed or canceled amid growing market access headwinds.

More recently, Ethiopia and the Philippines have emerged as new manufacturing hubs for tariff circumvention, attracting nearly a quarter of all new investment. This shift has recently prompted US solar manufacturers to file a complaint with the Department of Commerce alleging Ethiopia is being used to circumvent import duties on Chinese-made goods (Figure 10).

4. Wind turbines: Strong growth, but facing political backlash

Chinese outbound FDI in wind turbine manufacturing has boomed over the past two years, with 80% of investment announced since 2023 (Figure 13). This marks a sharp departure from historical patterns, where nearly all investment was domestic (98%), and overseas activity was limited to a few acquisitions of European turbine makers. Unlike in solar PV or batteries, where Chinese companies dominate global supply, Chinese wind turbines have remained a small fraction of international installations. Bulky components make shipping less economical and western incumbents dominate market shares. China consumes most of its own production domestically, with exports averaging only $4 billion annually over the past five years (Figure 16).

Rapid growth in outbound FDI since 2023 has been driven by a combination of push and pull factors. Chinese manufacturers are squeezed by overcapacity and intensifying price competition at home, making overseas expansion more urgent. Local content requirements and other trade barriers in target markets further deteriorate the economics for exports. Together, these pressures have pushed annual announced outbound FDI from an average of $200 million before 2023 to nearly $3 billion in 2025.

That said, wind investment remains modest compared to FDI in other clean tech sectors and highly geographically concentrated. Most new projects involve manufacturing plants tied to specific wind farms, where local production of turbine components or fully integrated turbine systems is a contractual requirement. Alongside these project-linked investments, new manufacturing capacity is also emerging in third markets such as Morocco, targeting European export markets rather than local consumption (Figure 14).

This rapid expansion has drawn equally rapid regulatory scrutiny. In 2025, a turbine supplier for a German wind farm canceled its contract with Ming Yang amid mounting political scrutiny over security concerns related to Chinese participation in power grid infrastructure. In early 2026, the British government blocked the company’s $2 billion Chinese wind turbine manufacturing project in Scotland over national security concerns. The blocked project alone accounted for roughly 40% of all announced investment to date, underlining the fragility of this nascent boom. All in, only 25% of announced wind turbine investment has been completed so far.

Implications and outlook

The data presented in this report yields the following implications for policymakers:

First, China’s role as a global source of clean tech FDI is not as large as existing tallies of investment pledges suggest. Our data shows that Chinese companies are becoming more important investors in global clean tech manufacturing, but simply counting FDI pledges overstates the true extent of Chinese FDI. It is important that policymakers who are making bets on attracting Chinese investment understand the complex political economy that is shaping Chinese outbound investment and the boom-and-bust cycles it has produced throughout the past three decades.

Second, exports remain the dominant mode for Chinese clean tech producers to serve overseas markets. While overseas investment is growing, our data shows that Chinese producers remain primarily focused on domestic investment. Since the pandemic, domestic capital expenditure has exceeded overseas investment by a ratio of 10:1 and exports have jumped 432% (and even more if one were to account for price effects). Realized outbound FDI has accelerated but from such a low base that overseas manufacturing capacity remains marginal compared to domestic capacity and exports. The scale of China’s domestic market, its highly competitive manufacturing ecosystem, and access to industrial policy support are strong incentives for Chinese firms to keep and expand their manufacturing base within China’s borders.

Third, Chinese outbound FDI in clean tech manufacturing is correlated with the rise of trade barriers. Our data shows that the rise of tariffs and other trade barriers is an important factor catalyzing investment in offshore manufacturing capacity. However, this “tariff-jumping” FDI often leads to a buildout of capacity in third countries with advantageous external trade configurations and not necessarily local plants close to final demand. Policymakers that are eager to attract Chinese clean tech factories must take a holistic approach to trade defense (including safeguards against transshipping), possibly in combination with local content instruments. At the same time, expansive market access barriers—such as supply chain security measures in the United States—result in the withholding, cancelation, and withdrawal of Chinese investment.

Fourth, the evidence for the local impact of Chinese clean tech investments remains mixed. Our data on realized investments show that the track record of Chinese clean tech investments abroad is very short. Most large greenfield facilities are either still under construction or in early stages of production. Within that small sample, there are examples of successful investments that have created entirely new industry clusters (EV investments in Hungary). At the same time, there are data points that reinforce existing concerns about Chinese producers exporting weak labor standards (BYD in Brazil), crowding out other firms (nickel processing in Indonesia), and increasing supply chain dependence on inputs from China (solar PV manufacturing in Southeast Asia). More research is needed to clarify these patterns, but these initial data points confirm the importance of strong domestic institutions and civil society efforts to monitor Chinese FDI and mitigate negative local spillovers.

Looking forward, tough market conditions at home and growing barriers to accessing overseas markets through exports will create strong incentives for Chinese firms to continue expanding their overseas presence through outbound FDI. However, political headwinds will remain elevated. Beijing maintains administrative controls over outbound capital flows and is moving to further tighten its grip and explicitly align its outbound investment controls with geopolitical and economic statecraft goals. Meanwhile, host countries will continue to strengthen their defensive toolkits through investment reviews and next-generation FDI conditionality rules, in part in response to Beijing more actively weaponizing FDI for economic statecraft. Taken together, these factors make it likely that China’s global clean tech FDI will unfold in a more gradual and piecemeal fashion rather than a green energy tsunami.

Methodology Appendix

Scope

The CBM China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard tracks Chinese outbound foreign direct investment since 2014 globally. It covers the three most important clean tech sectors: EVs, wind turbines, and solar PV. Investments across the entire clean technology value chain are categorized into three segments:

• Upstream: Extraction and refining of critical raw minerals such as lithium or nickel.
• Midstream: Manufacturing of intermediary components like battery materials, wind turbine blades, and solar wafers.
• Downstream: Assembly, production and distribution of finished goods such as EVs, wind turbines, and solar modules.

Investments in power generation assets, such as the acquisition of wind farms or the development of solar power plants, are not included.

Methodology

The CBM China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard uses the proprietary transaction-based methodology of Rhodium Group’s China Cross-Border Monitor. It applies strict sourcing standards that only include robust FDI transactions that are verifiable while excluding rumors, unverifiable transactions, and investment projects without legally binding documentation. It also splits large multi-year transactions into quarterly increments and consistently monitors and updates transaction statuses, to ensure a robust measure of completed, delayed, dormant, or canceled investments.

Midstream and downstream investments are included only when the target asset can be clearly identified as primarily engaged in the development of covered clean technologies, or when the investor explicitly indicated at the time of the transaction that the asset would be integrated into a clean technology value chain. For example, Envision’s acquisition of AESC in Japan in 2018 is included under the EV value chain. On the other hand, Geely’s acquisition of Volvo in Sweden in 2010 and SAIC’s acquisition of MG in the UK in 2005 are excluded, because the target firms were not primarily focused on EVs at the time of the transaction. However, subsequent investments by Volvo and MG are tracked once their business strategy explicitly shifted toward primarily producing EVs. If target companies meet the criteria, investment values are recorded at full transaction value.

Upstream investments include transactions in the extraction or refining of minerals critical to clean technology manufacturing, such as copper, lithium, cobalt, silicon, nickel, manganese, graphite, and rare earths. These investments are attributed to specific technologies using the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Stated Policies Scenario projections for end-use demand by mineral. Projections are applied with reference to the announcement year of each investment. Projected demand shares are then used to allocate investment figures by mineral proportionally across technologies. For example, if the IEA estimates that 67% of lithium demand in a given period came from electric vehicles, then 67% of each Chinese outbound investment in lithium is attributed to the EV value chain.