293
Documented procurements in China’s wind-tech replacement campaign
Procurements that require foreign technology in China’s operating wind farms to be replaced with Chinese alternatives, or mandate Chinese technology in new ones.
About the project
A two-pronged strategy
China is replacing foreign technology already deployed across its wind farms with domestic alternatives, and reducing future dependencies through localisation requirements for new installations.
Over years of expansion, China’s wind industry installed foreign technology in turbines and control rooms. The campaign now targets that installed base: advanced digital controllers from Europe, databases and operating systems from the US and other imported components are to be removed and replaced with domestic alternatives. Buyers cite supply risks, cybersecurity and the need for control over critical infrastructure as their main reasons.
We reviewed 1,686 wind-sector procurement documents issued by Chinese utilities and their subsidiaries, and found 293 that call for foreign technology to be replaced with Chinese alternatives, or impose domestic-localisation requirements on new installations. Of these, 251 concern replacement in wind farms that are already in operation and 42 impose domestic-localisation requirements on new installations.
China’s localisation drive is not set out in a single policy or regulation. It works through a collection of opaque administrative measures, which is why procurement records are the place to uncover it. But those records sit on fragmented platforms and older notices are often deleted, so what follows is the visible portion of something likely larger. Wind is also one area among many. The administrative measures collected for this study cover over a dozen sectors, within energy and beyond it. Together, the evidence indicates that the localisation drive extends to electricity grids, photovoltaics, battery energy storage and coal-fired power generation.
We focus on wind because Europe has not yet decided how to treat Chinese suppliers in this sector. Chinese manufacturers are just beginning to establish a presence in the European market, while Europe is actively debating the conditions that should apply to their access. China’s treatment of foreign suppliers therefore has direct relevance for European debates over the future of the economic and trade relationship.
How we built the dataset and how to read itFrom 1,686 documents to 293 procurements: open-source, human-reviewed and grounded in a review of policy and regulatory documents.
01 / Collect
Procurement records
This study relies solely on open-source information: procurement documents that Chinese utility companies and their subsidiaries publish on public tender platforms and repositories, including tender notices, procurement notices and award results.
We collected 1,686 wind-related procurement documents and screened them against inclusion rules set by the research team. The resulting sample of 293 procurements was refined through several rounds of human review.
02 / Find
Two routes to the evidence
First, we used Global Energy Monitor’s (GEM) Global Wind Power Tracker as a reference list of Chinese wind projects. Its 818 Chinese wind project records are a facility-level dataset covering utility-scale onshore and offshore wind farms of 10MW or more.
Second, we used publicly accessible procurement data issued by Chinese power companies, their subsidiaries and project companies: tender notices, competitive procurement notices, single-source procurement notices, amendments and award results, retrieved from Chinese procurement platforms and public repositories.
03 / Search
Localisation and replacement terms
We searched each of the 818 Chinese wind projects selected from GEM’s Global Wind Power Tracker for relevant procurement activity, combining the GEM project name with localisation and replacement terms, including:
- domestic localisation
(国产化, guóchǎnhuà) - domestically produced technology
(国产, guóchǎn) - self-reliant and controllable
(自主可控, zìzhǔ kěkòng) - secure and controllable
(安全可控, ānquán kěkòng) - import substitution
(进口替代) - replacement
(替换) - substitution
(替代) - retrofit or modification
(改造)
Second, we conducted keyword-led searches directly across Chinese procurement platforms and public repositories, combining search terms with the names of wind technologies, systems, power companies, subsidiaries and wind farms.
04 / Review
Policy and regulatory documents
Alongside the procurement record, we reviewed Chinese policy and regulatory documents to trace the campaign: laws, regulations, guiding opinions, notices, five-year plans and public references to non-public documents. They are listed at the end of the policy timeline.
What counts as in scope
A procurement notice is considered “in scope” for this study only if either of the following conditions is met:
- Brownfield replacement: components or digital system is to be replaced or localised, displacing a foreign technology supplier that is either explicitly named or inferred from the evidence
- Greenfield localisation: a domestic localisation requirement applies to a technology in a new installation
The inclusion rules were defined by the research team. Software tools, including AI-assisted ones, helped label documents, flag likely duplicates and extract details such as capacity, technologies and suppliers. The sample was then refined iteratively: researchers reviewed and relabelled records, checked them against the source documents, and removed duplicates and doubtful cases. Each round of review tightened the dataset.
A floor, not a census
The 293 procurements should be considered a floor rather than the full scale of localisation in the wind sector. Procurement records are fragmented across numerous platforms and are not consistently searchable. Detailed localisation requirements are often contained in technical specifications that require registration, sit behind paywalls or are not released with the public announcement. Older notices are also frequently deleted or poorly indexed. Coverage before 2024 is considered incomplete and might understate earlier activity.
Why we say “targeted”
Throughout this page we refer to wind farms targeted by the campaign. A procurement notice documents a requirement to replace or localise a technology; it does not show whether the work has started or been completed. “Targeted” describes what the record supports.
How to read charts and figures
Every procurement count on this page comes from the same sample of 293. We included a procurement only where the evidence clearly identified replacement of foreign technology with domestic alternatives, or a domestic-localisation requirement for a new installation, as part of what the buyer was commissioning. These are documented procurement requirements, not simply mentions of foreign equipment.
Of the 293, 251 concern replacement in operating installations and 42 concern localisation in new installations. Charts show different parts of this sample; one procurement can cover several technologies, suppliers or sites. Capacity figures sum the affected capacity of the wind farms targeted by the campaign, counting each wind farm once even where it appears in several procurements; European fleets are shown as benchmarks. Supplier origin follows the dataset classification (for example, ABB, headquartered in Switzerland with Swedish roots, is counted as EU-origin).
The campaign in progress
China’s replacement campaign in progress
2021–2023
20 procurements by the end of 2023
The earliest procurements we identified date from late 2021. Coverage before 2024 is incomplete: older notices are often deleted or poorly indexed, so these years are shown as one bar.
2024–2025
49 procurements in 2024, 108 in 2025
Replacement orders appear in every quarter, alongside a smaller stream of localisation requirements for new wind farms.
2026 · through August
116 procurements so far
The record continues as state-owned companies work towards the reported end-2027 replacement deadline.
Replacement orders appear in every quarter since 2024
Procurements by quarter, 2021–2026
Replacement in operating wind farmsLocalisation in new installations
2021–2023 shown as one bar: coverage before 2024 is incomplete. 2026 Q3: through 19 August.
The policy timeline
How technological dependence became a security question in China
China’s drive to replace foreign technology developed in three phases: a conviction that dependence on foreign technology is a strategic risk; an industrial strategy to build domestic alternatives and create demand for them; and, since 2022, an organised campaign to replace the foreign technology already in place.
Phase 1 · 2012–2020
Tech autonomy as offence and defence
Beijing’s concerns about foreign technological dependence predate any American action to restrict access to advanced exports by a long way. They even predate Xi Jinping’s formal appointment as Chinese president and the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By 2012, official Chinese documents were already cautioning that the country’s core information technologies could end up “controlled by others”, and a ministry-level plan was promoting “secure and reliable” hardware and software across critical sectors. A series of external shocks then deepened those concerns and led Beijing to increasingly view self-reliance and control not only as a defensive but also an offensive capability.
Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures about American surveillance were the first. Reports that the National Security Agency had intercepted American network equipment and fitted it with surveillance tools before delivery suggested to Beijing that a critical system built on foreign-controlled technology could never be fully secure. Access to technology was insufficient. Security also required the domestic capability to develop core technologies and operational control over the systems built on them.
The Trump administration’s use of export controls against Chinese telecommunication companies from 2017 confirmed the diagnosis and added an additional lesson. ZTE was denied access to US components and technology. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, followed by rules restricting foreign manufacturers from supplying it with semiconductors made using US technology.
Beijing drew the same lesson from each of these episodes: China had to shrink the dependencies that others could turn against it, while deepening those that give it leverage over others.
- Official documents warn of foreign control over core IT
- Snowden disclosures
- National Security Law
- US export controls on ZTE and Huawei
- Covid-19 and “dual circulation” strategy
Phase 2 · 2016–2026
Building supply, creating demand
The next task was to turn this conviction into an industrial strategy: build domestic alternatives and create the demand needed to bring them to scale.
One of the earliest visible systemic responses was xinchuang (信创), short for “innovation and application of information technology” (xìnxī jìshù yìngyòng chuàngxīn, 信息技术应用创新). Created in 2016 under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the programme initially focused on replacing software in party and government bodies, eventually extending to the financial sector, where institutions replaced IBM and Oracle systems.
Meanwhile, a series of security regulations and product whitelists have been drawn up to generate guaranteed demand for these domestic alternatives. Because those are not subsidies, this demand-side support structure is hard to capture in the classic categories of state-aid. In energy, for instance, the 2021 regulation on critical information infrastructure obliges operators to favour network products and services classed as “secure and trustworthy”. The 2024 power monitoring security rules put this principle into practice by requiring operators to use certified products from a “secure product” directory, developed by an advisory committee led by China’s two national grid companies and other major power companies.
Together, these measures create both the supply of domestic alternatives and the protected demand needed to bring them to scale. US export controls might have accelerated this drive to a degree, but the domestic localisation campaign to develop alternatives to foreign technology is not only focused on American suppliers. As this study shows, European companies are also explicitly designated security risks to be mitigated. The campaign is driven less by technical risk assessments of individual products than by a political judgement that all foreign dependence is a vulnerability.
- Xinchuang programme created
- 14th Five-Year Plan
- Critical information infrastructure regulation
- Power-monitoring security rules
- SOE procurement rules
- 15th Five-Year Plan
Phase 3 · 2022–2030
Replacing foreign technology
With a domestic technology stack in place, China’s self-reliance drive is entering its final phase—substitution. Since 2022, Beijing has pursued a campaign to replace foreign technology across party-state institutions and state-owned enterprises in more than a dozen sectors. The campaign rests on two unpublished documents issued in 2022, Document No. 29 and Document No. 79, discussed in detail below.
The titles of both documents carry the word “replacement” (tìdài, 替代). They seem to set binding targets for party and government bodies, public institutions and state-owned enterprises across 13 strategic industries, including telecommunications, aviation, energy and healthcare, to replace network and information technologies, including both hardware and software, with “secure and controllable” alternatives by 2027 (see the list of policy documents below). This amounts to a “rip-and-replace” order covering a broad range of critical IT, infrastructure and industrial technologies.
- Document No. 29
- Document No. 79
- Replacement plans due
- Quarterly reporting on replacement progress begins
- Energy-equipment self-reliance target set
- IT replacement deadline (hardware and software)
- Energy-equipment self-reliance deadline
Key documents behind the replacement campaign
Two documents anchor the campaign, issued by central CCP and State Council bodies, alongside relevant ministries and agencies: documents No. 29 and No. 79. Neither has been formally published, and their full texts appear to circulate primarily within government and state-owned companies.
中共中央办公厅 · 国务院办公厅
General Offices of the CCP Central Committee
and the State Council
Document No. 29
关于深化安全可靠
应用替代工作的意见
Opinions on Deepening Secure and Trustworthy Application and Replacement
The wider Party-state framework
According to public references to the document, it set the wider party-state framework for “secure and trustworthy” application and replacement of information technology across 13 sectors, including energy, telecommunications, aviation and healthcare, with a target date of 2027 for “secure and trustworthy” technologies to be the “norm” in these sectors.
国务院国资委 · 工业和信息化部
State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission · Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
Document No. 79
关于做好中央企业
安可替代工作的指导意见
Guiding Opinions on Advancing Secure and Trustworthy Application and Replacement in State-owned Enterprises
The company-level obligations
According to public references to the document, it turns document No. 29’s replacement agenda into binding obligations for state-owned enterprises: submit replacement plans by November 2022, report progress quarterly from January 2023, and complete replacement with “secure and trustworthy” information technology by the end of 2027, with operating systems and software fully replaced and a 60% target for industrial operating systems.
Policy documents cited12 laws, regulations, plans and guidance documents, with links to the originals
- National Security Law国家安全法Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress
- 14th Five-Year Plan“十四五”规划纲要National People’s Congress
- Regulation on the security protection of critical information infrastructure关键信息基础设施安全保护条例State Council
- Document No. 29: Opinions on deepening secure and trustworthy application and replacement [of information technology]关于深化安全可靠应用替代工作的意见General Office of the CCP Central Committee; General Office of the State Council
- Document No. 79: Guiding opinions on advancing secure and trustworthy application and replacement in state-owned enterprises关于做好中央企业安可替代工作的指导意见SASAC; Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
- Guiding opinions on regulating procurement management in centrally administered SOEs关于规范中央企业采购管理工作的指导意见SASAC; NDRC
- Technical specification for connecting wind power plant to power system风电场接入电力系统技术规定SAMR; Standardization Administration of China
- Regulation on security protection of power monitoring and control systems电力监控系统安全防护规定NDRC
- Notice on improving grid-connection security capabilities of new energy and new grid-connected entities关于提升新能源和新型并网主体涉网安全能力 服务新型电力系统高质量发展的通知National Energy Administration
- Guiding opinions on promoting high-quality development of energy equipment关于推进能源装备高质量发展的指导意见NEA; MIIT; SASAC; SAMR
- 15th Five-Year Plan“十五五”规划纲要National People’s Congress
- 15th Five-Year Plan for building a new energy system新型能源体系建设“十五五”规划NDRC; NEA
From policy to procurement
The order travels down to the wind farm
In the energy sector, the evidence of replacement is much better documented and is consistently referenced in public documents.
In 2025, the National Energy Administration explicitly stated that by 2030, China’s “critical energy equipment” supply chains will achieve “self-reliant and controllable” status.
Large state-owned utilities and engineering groups have, in turn, written these national requirements into their own corporate procurement rules. For example, one state-owned power group refers to “group requirements for domestic substitution” when ordering existing network equipment to be replaced with Chinese systems. Another describes the replacement of critical industrial-control systems as implementing national and company policies on self-reliance and control. A third states that, under national requirements of “secure and reliable application replacement”, compliant technology should be the norm and non-compliant technology the exception, with everything technically replaceable to be replaced. The procurement documents of a state-owned engineering group similarly require projects to comply with the internal “secure and controllable replacement” work plan of its new-energy subsidiary.
These instructions help explain why similar orders appear across distant provinces. The map traces their cumulative reach; growing intensity shows repeated procurement activity within an already broad footprint.
The campaign’s footprint spreads across China
Our database shows that China’s localisation campaign on wind energy technologies now reaches 30 of mainland China’s 31 provincial-level regions. The earliest cases we identified date from late 2021, in Hebei and Inner Mongolia, one of China’s main wind-power centres. By the end of 2024 the campaign’s reach had grown to 27 regions; later quarters mostly intensify an already broad footprint. Scroll to follow the spread.
2021
The first visible records
2 procurements in 2 provinces by the end of 2021. Older notices are harder to recover.
2022–2023
More places enter the record
By the end of 2023, 20 identified procurements link to 13 provincial-level regions.
2024
A much wider footprint
The cumulative reach rises to 27 regions. A procurement covering several provinces appears in each.
2025
A national footprint
By the end of 2025, 177 procurements link to 29 provincial-level regions. Most new procurements come from regions already targeted.
2026 · through August
Every region except Shanghai
By August 2026, 293 procurements link to 30 regions. Most of the growth comes from more procurements within regions already targeted.
By August 2026 the campaign had reached every provincial-level region except Shanghai
Cumulative procurements by province
Q4 2021
2procurements2regions
Select a province to inspect its count
036 procurements
Cumulative procurements · provinces may overlap.
Inside the technology stack
Replacing the systems that make a wind farm work
China already produces almost all major wind turbine hardware domestically, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for 99.96% of installations in 2025. The localisation drive is now targeting what remains: in replacement projects, removing existing foreign dependencies from the control layer; in new projects, preventing new dependencies by requiring domestic technologies from the outset.
The campaign concentrates on the equipment and software through which power assets are run and controlled. In hardware, that means converters (which make the electricity fit for the grid), programmable logic controllers (PLCs, the industrial-grade chips at the heart of turbine control systems), variable frequency drives (which regulate motor speed), fibre-optic transceivers (which carry signals and control commands) and servers. In software, it covers SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition, the system operators use to monitor and steer the turbines), pitch control, databases, operating systems and energy management systems. Some tenders admit only bidders certified for HarmonyOS, Huawei’s alternative to Windows.
This choice of targets reveals what Beijing fears most: that foreign software, databases and other networked components could be used to disrupt power generation remotely or to take control of it. Some operators say so explicitly, warning in their notices that “foreign forces” could gain control of the technology.
The visual follows five of these layers, from the turbine to the control room, and shows how often each appears in the 293-procurement sample.
Which parts are targeted?
The campaign reaches from components inside a turbine to the software running the farm. Compare five layers in the 293-procurement sample.
Pitch systems
Pitch drives rotate the blades around their own axes. Adjusting the blade angle regulates power and protects the turbine in strong winds.
Turbine control systems
The turbine’s industrial controller reads sensors and commands the machine. It coordinates operation, responds to changing conditions and triggers protective actions.
Converters
Power converters condition electricity from the generator so it can be delivered to the grid at the required frequency and voltage.
SCADA systems
SCADA brings the turbines together on an operator’s screens. It collects operating data, displays alarms and lets staff monitor and command the wind farm.
Operating systems
Operating systems run the servers and workstations beneath monitoring and control applications. They provide the software foundation on which those applications depend.
Pitch systems39
Main control35
Converters28
SCADA83
Operating systems102
39of 293 procurements
target this layer13.3%
35of 293 procurements
target this layer11.9%
28of 293 procurements
target this layer9.6%
83of 293 procurements
target this layer28.3%
102of 293 procurements
target this layer34.8%
The suppliers being displaced
Western technology is being designed out
All 251 replacement projects documented in our dataset involve replacing foreign technology with a domestic alternative. While in most the displaced supplier is unnamed, in 61 cases the notice identifies it. These cases provide a useful indication of which countries are most exposed to China’s replacement drive.
European companies are among the clearest targets in the wind sector. Of the 61 procurements that name a foreign supplier, 34 (56%) name at least one company of EU origin and 26 (43%) a US company; the rest name suppliers from the UK and Japan. Leading European wind original equipment manufacturers such as Vestas, as well as key component and control-system suppliers such as ABB, Bachmann and Beckhoff, are named. Where suppliers are not named, the replacement objective is often implied through requirements on domestic (国产, or guóchǎn) products.
61 procurements name a foreign supplier. The treemap shows which suppliers appear and how often: larger rectangles mean more procurements naming that company, while colour indicates origin. Switching the technology layer reveals where those supplier relationships sit inside the stack. These counts describe the observed replacement requirements, not suppliers’ market shares.
EUUSOther
Select a supplier to inspect its count.
Read the counts as a list
Supplier mentions, not market shares. Technology groups and layers follow the dataset classification; ABB is counted as EU-origin.
Security as a reason for replacement
When foreign dependence becomes a security argument
In the procurement notices, foreign technology installed in wind farms appears as a threat to security, a source of dependence and a reliability problem. Notices typically say that foreign systems fall short of being “secure and controllable”, could be controlled by “foreign forces”, or expose the buyer to foreign monopoly, slow procurement and faulty equipment, and then invoke these risks to justify replacing them.
The campaign, and the wider political drive it represents, is often referenced indirectly through coded abbreviations such as AQKK (安全可靠, or “ānquán kěkào”, meaning secure and trustworthy, or 安全可控, “ānquán kěkòng”, meaning secure and controllable) and AKTD (安可替代, ānkě tìdài, “secure and trustworthy replacement”). Related formulations call for technologies that are “self-reliant and controllable” (自主可控, zìzhǔ kěkòng).
The language of domestic localisation runs throughout, appearing in 86% of the sampled tenders in which foreign technology is replaced. From mid-2024, however, this industrial policy rationale is increasingly accompanied by a second vocabulary centred on security and control. Terms such as “self-reliant and controllable” become markedly more prominent, suggesting the economic and security reasoning are increasingly intertwined.
This shift becomes particularly visible from 2025. From then on, the concern is no longer only that foreign suppliers hold market share, but that dependence on them may create vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, including through remote access, external control or disruption. Supply chain concerns—the risk of cut-offs to spare part access or long procurement cycles—remain present throughout the sample, but appears less frequently than the broader language of localisation and control.
Security and control arguments are gaining ground
Share of notices citing each reason, by period
Swipe the chart sideways to see every period →
Select an argument to follow it across the record.
Reasons overlap: one notice can give several. Reason categories consolidate the keywords used in each notice. 2026: through August.
In the buyers’ own words
Security arguments in the buyers’ own words
Three procurements, three arguments for domestic replacement.
Different reasons.
Same choice: domestic replacement.
At Shuiquanzi, a state-owned power group specifies domestic, controllable pitch systems. At Kangbao, another combines cybersecurity and localisation requirements with a warning about foreign control over imported components. At Erkou, a third lists supply cut-offs, slow spare-parts deliveries and industrial-control security risks.
The notices reach the same purchasing decision through different arguments: domestic replacement. The excerpts below show each buyer’s stated logic, rather than independently verified vulnerabilities.
Implications for Europe
What China’s campaign means for Europe
The wind farms targeted by the campaign add up to about 42.4 gigawatts across 438 assets: more than the entire installed wind capacity of Spain (1.28 times), the UK (1.32 times) or France (1.61 times), and more than half of Germany’s (55%).2
2 The figure measures the size of the targeted farms, not the volume of equipment to be removed.
The dataset
~42.4 GW across 438 wind assets
The capacity of wind farms targeted by the campaign, not the amount of equipment removed.
Spain · UK · France
Larger than each national fleet
More than the whole wind fleet of Spain (1.28×), the UK (1.32×) or France (1.61×), onshore and offshore.
Germany
Over half of Europe’s largest wind fleet
The targeted wind farms are equivalent to about 55% of Germany’s installed wind capacity.
Targeted capacity exceeds the entire wind fleets of Spain, France and the UK
Wind farms targeted in China vs. national installed wind capacity, GW, end-2025 (WindEurope)
A European response starts with the control layer
Europe does not need to and should not reproduce every element of China’s approach. But analysing that approach is essential: it reveals which technological dependencies Beijing considers strategically sensitive, how it acts on those risks, and what European policymakers should examine in their own infrastructure.
Key takeaways for Europe
Clean technology is a national-security issue for Beijing
China treats wind power and other clean technologies as part of critical infrastructure. The question is who supplies and controls the systems on which essential services depend, as well as who wins market share.
Domestic technology requirements and cybersecurity rules reinforce each other
China builds its own technologies while certification, product lists and procurement rules create demand for them. Security-driven replacement needs viable substitutes; industrial policy gains scale from that mandated demand. The two are designed to work together.
Remote access makes control a strategic concern
The focus on controllers, software and monitoring systems reveals a concern about remote disruption of power generation. References to control by “foreign forces” show that Beijing considers who could exercise influence through connected equipment.
Risk assessment goes beyond faults and vulnerabilities
Buyers invoke cybersecurity weaknesses alongside supplier dependence, national security and the possibility of foreign control. In China’s approach, a system’s technical performance does not settle the question of whether its foreign dependencies are acceptable.
This study reveals what China wants out of its power system. The question for Europe is which dependencies it is willing to tolerate in its own.
Acknowledgements: We thank the cybersecurity and wind energy experts, as well as various wind technology providers, who helped us better understand the technical complexities of these sectors.
About OSW
Centre for Eastern Studies
OSW is a public research institution founded in Warsaw in 1990. It provides independent analysis of political, social and economic developments in Poland’s international neighbourhood. Its research covers China, Russia and much of Europe and Eurasia, alongside energy policy, trade, transport, digital connectivity and European security.
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