Influences of policy learning, transfer, and post transfer learning in the development of China’s wind power policies

China’s renewable energy (RE) sector is developing rapidly, driven by growing energy needs, increased awareness of climate change, and heightened concerns for environmental degradation caused by the country’s industrialisation process over the past decades. The Chinese government has been dedicated to the development of its RE industry and has engaged extensively in drawing lessons from abroad and applying these lessons to its own experiences in the post transfer learning process to develop policies that have contributed to the development of the largest wind power sector in the world. This thesis provides a perspective of how China, a ‘socialist market economy’, has applied primarily market mechanisms from liberalised market systems found in Western Europe and the United States to develop its domestic wind power sector. Having similar economic, political and cultural value systems is not necessarily a prerequisite to policy learning; rather policy objective compatibility is a more important criterion when drawing and transferring lessons. The objective of this thesis is to analyse how the policy learning from abroad, policy transfer and the post transfer process has influenced the development of wind power policies in China through the application of a framework to analyse the policies. The framework was specifically developed for this thesis and was largely based on policy learning and policy transfer concepts as well as general learning literature. Using the wind power policies in China as a case study, this thesis identifies elements of policy learning from abroad and examines how transferred policies have been applied in first level policies that are top-level coordinating policies (e.g. mid- to long-term strategies and frameworks) as well as second level policies, with specific objectives focusing on diffusion and adoption (e.g. renewable energy policy instruments). Overall, studying policy learning from abroad, policy transfer and the post transfer process contributes to understanding how learning across political boarders contributes to the domestic policy formation and implementation process.