This article was published by The Energy Mix on Jan. 22, 2026.
By Gaye Taylor
Senior Chinese officials arrived in Davos, Switzerland this week speaking the language of multilateralism. They ended the week correcting the United States president after he dismissed wind power and doubled down on oil and gas.
During his keynote address at the World Economic Forum, Donald Trump ranted that China has no working domestic wind farms, or more specifically, that he hadn’t “been able to find any” beyond a handful that he claimed were marketing backdrops used to sell wind turbines to “stupid people.”
China was swift to bat away Trump’s disinformation, noting at a press briefing that it has been the global leader in installed wind capacity for 15 consecutive years, reports Reuters.
“China’s efforts to tackle climate change and promote the development and application of renewable energy in the world are obvious to all,” foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, adding that the country’s exports of technologies like solar and wind have helped other countries reduce their carbon emissions by over four billion tonnes.
“As a responsible developing country, China is willing to work with all parties to continue to promote the global green and low-carbon transformation,” Jiakun said.
Vice-Premier He Lifeng had spoken at some length on this theme during his own main stage address, some 24 hours before the American president arrived.
“China will work with all other parties to fully and effectively implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, uphold the multilateral process on climate change, and actively promote global green and low-carbon development,” he said, just a couple of weeks after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the UNFCCC and five dozen other international fora. Earlier in his address, the vice-premier had pledged that “we are committed to building bridges, not walls,” vowing to “work with all parties to foster closer partnerships for green development.”
For his part Trump “pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order” in his address, as the New York Times put it. He prompted multiple analysts to compare his speech to mob boss language, declaring that “Canada lives because of the United States,” and that “after the [Second World War], we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that?”
He derided the energy transition as “the green new scam,” belittling Europe for its continuing efforts to decarbonize.
“Natural gas production is at an all-time high by far and oil production is up by 730,000 barrels a day, and last week, we picked up 50 million barrels from Venezuela alone,” Trump said.
Trump followed a pronouncement about America’s global lead in artificial intelligence with the claim that all AI facilities built on U.S. soil will be powered by brand-new oil and gas plants. “They’re even going coal, in some cases.”
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