Toward Technology-Sensitive Catching-Up Policies: Insights from Renewable Energy in China

We find that traditional top-down catching-up policies played a decisive role in the development of China's wind industry, but were of limited importance in the early solar PV industry, and resulted only in a limited period of rapid growth in the biomass power plant industry. The relative progress achieved in these three industries is not related to top-down policy guidance alone, but also to private sector initiative, international interdependencies, and flexibility in adapting policy mixes to each industry's technological characteristics. These results suggest that policy makers in newly industrializing countries (NICs) should avoid drafting generic sector plans, but should tailor plans to individual industries, and respond to changing policy support needs as technological capacities and global competitiveness develop.