This article provides an analytical overview of major works on the topic of environmental governance in China, with a particular emphasis on studies examining policies during the reform era (post-1978).

This book provides a two-level analytical framework and empirical study to analyze the reason and process of China’s transition that is from a follower to driver in the field of global climate governance, and is especially valuable the dialogues and cooperation between the government, media and civil society. Nowadays, China shows strong leadership to push the process of global climate governance. It’s the first and fastest time in the past 40-year history of China’s Opening-up that China wins the international respect and trust in one of the issues of global governance. What experiences can be summarized? What dynamic situations and new possibilities emerged after Trump, the U.S. president announced to withdraw from the Paris Agreement? How to move forward based on the existing success? This timely book offers new lens for international readers to understand China’s effort domestically and internationally in the field of climate change and illustrate the outlook of the climate governance in the frame of win-win co-governance model.

Based on the empirical analysis of the effectiveness of four provincial centres for the diffusion of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a market mechanism for emission reductions, Miriam Schröder scrutinizes the strengths and weaknesses of hybrid actors' performance on the local Chinese carbon market.

In the last thirty years, China has experienced rapid economic development and urbanisation which has resulted in high levels of environmental degradation and has put considerable pressure on the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. As China commits to considerably lower the carbon intensity of its economy, this volume analyses and explains the governance of climate change mitigation responses in major Chinese cities. The book focuses specifically on two highly carbon intensive sectors, buildings and transport, in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong to explore how collaborative municipal networks function in practice in Chinese cities. The authors find that effective coordination relies on the political will of local administrative elites, the political significance attached to climate change issues, the legitimate authority granted to the coordinating agency, and human and financial capitals. Collaboration is hampered by limited span of network engagement, inadequate authority of the primary network participants, insufficient input and output legitimacy of the sectoral innovations, and missing linkages across functionally segregated sectors. The book concludes that the enhanced collaboration and coordination between networks that has emerged in the process of low carbon transitions is transforming the Chinese environmental state into a more pluralistic, inclusive and legitimate one. This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across disciplines including Chinese studies, environmental politics and policy, urban studies, and planning and geography.

This book focuses on the politics, discourse and actors surrounding climate change issues in China. This framework offers a new way of observing Chinese discourses around climate change. Discursive changes in coal consumption and air pollution have been raised to uncover the various motivations of China towards addressing climate issues. This book will be of interest to a variety of different stakeholders including policy-makers, non-state actors, business communities and media, and anyone who are interested in the climate governance of China.

This book explores how and why innovative climate policies spread across subnational regions and between governance levels in China. Despite the significance of emerging economies in a pathway to a zero-carbon future, research to date on China’s transformation governance remains limited. Drawing on a theoretical framework for policy diffusion and based on extensive data from expert interviews with Chinese decisionmakers and policy practitioners, Lina Li and Maia Haru Hall focus on the policy of emissions trading systems (ETS) and two key case studies: Shanghai and Hubei. The authors examine the role of the national government and how much freedom the subnational regions have in developing ETS policy, as well as pinpointing key actors and the role of policy and knowledge diffusion mechanisms. Overall, this book sheds light on the competition between China and the West in the transition to climate-friendly societies and economies, highlighting opportunities for cooperation between them. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics and policy, climate change, urban studies, and Chinese studies more broadly.

The acceleration of globalization and the rise of China are among the most important events in the 21st century. Globalization is a double-edged sword for human society. There is a strong belief among the international community that global governance is the most effective solution to most of our global problems. In this volume Chinese scholars contribute to the study of global governance by exploring ways to effectively face the tough challenges brought by globalization, such as economic prosperity, environmental issues, and global security.