How California fell into China’s climate trap

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How California fell into China’s climate trap
By Washington Examiner
May 22, 2026

Thanks to the highest gas and electricity prices in the nation, California faces structural budget deficits that will bankrupt it if there is even a slight economic downturn. California’s fiscal frailty and energy dependence are no accident. They are a trap designed by the Chinese Communist Party, and the state’s Democrats have eagerly fallen into it.

In a new report, the National Association of Scholars details Beijing’s efforts over decades to exploit the Left’s obsession with and exaggeration of climate change. This weakens the United States and its allies by creating political pressure to reduce oil, gas, and coal production. It also makes nations more dependent on China-controlled supply chains for electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and rare-earth minerals.

China controls more than half of the world’s rare-earth mining capacity and roughly 90% of refining capacity. The minerals are essential for technologies that Western governments mandate in the name of climate policy. China also produces more than 70% of the world’s electric vehicles. A forced transition away from fossil fuels, therefore, does not free the West from China’s dependence. It merely shifts that dependence from domestic oil and gas producers to Chinese-dominated minerals and manufacturing.

China has no intention of disarming itself in a similar manner. While Western politicians lecture their own citizens about the evils of fossil fuels and say they should be left in the ground, China builds coal capacity. Construction began on 94.5 gigawatts of new coal power in China in 2024 alone, the highest level in a decade.

Beijing’s strategy is clear. Encourage the West to strangle itself. Let willing dupes in the West mandate technologies that China dominates. Let the West call this “climate leadership.” Then sell the West what it can no longer produce itself.

Nowhere has fallen harder for this con than California.
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In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s National Development and Reform Commission to cooperate on carbon emissions, methane standards, carbon trading, building energy use, electric vehicles, and green-energy markets.

In 2017, Brown went further. He signed agreements with the provinces of Jiangsu and Sichuan, as well as a deal with China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
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That is precisely the vulnerability China wants to create in our most populous state. California Democrats shut down domestic production, mandate Chinese technologies, partner with Communist Party-controlled institutions, and then congratulate themselves for moral leadership. Beijing gets richer, California gets more expensive, and America gets weaker.

By falling into China’s climate trap, California Democrats have not just made their own state poorer. They have made the entire U.S. weaker.

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