Air travellers making the descent into Islamabad, Nairobi or São Paulo may be struck by the sight of solar panels scattered liberally over the rooftops. Regular visitors to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city, will probably have detected a marked improvement in air quality and traffic noise of late, owing to the shift from combustion engines towards electric vehicles. Hanoi and Addis Ababa may soon follow.
What’s behind the growing spread of clean technology in developing countries? In a word, China. Over the last two decades, Chinese firms, backed by consistent government support, have been pushing down costs and pushing up technical performance. The result is solar panels and electric vehicles becoming an option for growing numbers of people in countries across the economic development spectrum.
Working with the insights and advisory firm GlobeScan, we looked into global attitudes towards clean tech, whether built in China or not. Surveying 32,000 people in 33 countries from July to September 2025, we found that solar panels and electric vehicles are extremely appealing, with more than eight in ten people expressing an interest in these technologies or having already bought them. Affordability remains a consistent barrier to purchase among those who are interested, but with prices still falling, many of those who are clean-tech curious may soon become adopters and advocates.
Emerging markets turn to China’s clean tech
Globally, around half of people would consider buying a Chinese-made solar panel or electric vehicle (EV). But people in emerging markets are much more likely to buy Chinese clean-tech products than their rich-world counterparts.
There is overwhelming interest in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, where 87% of people across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa say they are likely to consider buying Chinese-made solar panels. The same goes for 69% of people in Latin America and 67% in the Middle East and North Africa. Meanwhile, across Europe, on average 35% express interest. In the US and Canada, it’s only slightly higher, at 38%.
Those lower levels of interest in the west can be partly attributed to perceptions of Chinese-manufactured products as poor quality, as well as dependency and security concerns. Reluctance to buy Chinese could also come from associating Chinese imports with industrial decline and job losses; in other words, the long shadow of the China shock of the 00s. These factors are less likely to influence purchasing decisions in developing countries – for now.
Clean tech fuels China’s soft-power rise
On the other side of the ledger, greater openness to Chinese clean technologies may partly be due to greater availability. Those who try out Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) tend to be impressed, including in the Global North, with the CEO of American car giant Ford a notable example. As Jim Farley put it: “China’s successful for good reason. It has great innovation at a very low cost.” It may also reflect a generally improved global view of China as a source of relative stability, against the volatility of the US under Trump.
Our data shows that in the eight countries surveyed in both 2024 and 2025, likelihood to buy Chinese-made solar panels and EVs, and support for government procurement of Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines, either remained consistent or increased. Increases were seen in countries with whom China has consistently strong relations, like Brazil and South Africa, but also in those with whom China has a more complicated and uneasy relationship, such as India, Germany and – interestingly – the US.
Either way, as the world’s appetite for solar panels and EVs grows, clean tech is becoming an important contributor not only to China’s economy, but also to its soft power, especially in the fast-growing, increasingly confident economies of the Global South.
The recent COP30 climate conference, which the US did not attend, saw for the first time participation from Chinese clean-tech firms, such as CATL, Trina and BYD, making well-received presentations and showcasing their wares. The Brazilian presidency was effusive in its praise for China’s contribution to tackling climate change, highlighting its success in promoting the spread of essential low-carbon technologies around the world.
A new geopolitical battleground
Addressing an event on “South-South cooperation” in China’s bustling pavilion at COP, Huang Runqiu, the head of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), said: “We pay attention to the needs of developing countries”. China’s offer to the Global South, which also includes clean-tech investment, stands in stark contrast to the tariffs, aid cuts and fossil fuels of the US, and compares favourably with Europe’s carbon border policies.
Will this calm or inflame our current geopolitical tensions? Any chance of the US competing with China in clean tech has been wiped out, probably for good, with the gutting of the Inflation Reduction Act. When the IRA package of spending was signed into law in 2022, to encourage clean-tech manufacturing and innovation, it was seen as a turning point in US climate policy, and a chance for the US to deploy its massive fiscal resources to narrow China’s lead. But the US under Trump has no interest in competing with China in this domain, instead seeking to combat Chinese EVs and solar panels with American oil and gas exports.
China’s dominance of the sector is a major concern in Brussels, not to mention Tokyo and Seoul, where policymakers and strategists worry about over-reliance, industrial survival and forfeiting economic opportunities.
While the countries of the Global South seem more comfortable with this situation, there is no guarantee this will last, particularly if they do not feel they are getting a fair share of the economic and employment benefits that come from producing clean technologies. One thing is clear: the affordable clean technology we need to solve the shared problem of climate change is set to become only more geopolitical.
