The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative published a policy brief, Greening the Chinese banking system: A policy and regulatory landscape analysis, assessing how China’s evolving green finance approach since the early 2000s has created an enabling environment for sustained green growth. The research reviews nearly 50 policy instruments and links the development of China’s multi-layered green finance system to a combination of top-down direction, local implementation and piloting, and an incremental transition shaped by socioeconomic development and energy security considerations. The brief highlights sustainable finance taxonomies, referred to domestically as “catalogues”, including the 2025 Green Finance Endorsed Project Catalogue aimed at unifying rules across green finance products, excluding stock listing and issuance at exchanges. It also points to new sustainability reporting guidelines issued by the Ministry of Finance and China’s three stock exchanges in the past two years, adopting double materiality requirements, alongside prudential and supervisory measures such as assessment of banks’ green finance performance and structural monetary policy tools like the Carbon Emissions Reduction Facility to incentivise investment in renewable energy and green technology. As an outcome marker, cumulative green and social bond issuance reached RMB 4tn (USD 555.5bn) by end-2024, representing 11.7% of the global total and a twelvefold increase since 2016 with a compound annual growth rate of around 32%. Looking ahead, the brief concludes that meeting China’s stated goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 will depend on effective implementation of existing instruments, targeted capacity-building for financial institutions and corporates, and further development and implementation of sustainable finance standards in areas such as transition finance, nature finance, greenhouse gas accounting and information disclosure.
United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative 2026-02-10
United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative policy brief finds China’s green finance growth driven by extensive policy and regulatory support
The UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative released a brief on China's green finance evolution, highlighting nearly 50 policy instruments. It discusses sustainable finance taxonomies, new reporting guidelines, and measures like the Carbon Emissions Reduction Facility, noting a twelvefold increase in green and social bond issuance since 2016. It emphasizes the need for effective implementation of tools and development of finance standards to meet China's 2060 carbon goals.