Creating China S Climate Change Policy

Drawing on first hand interview data with experts and government officials, Olivia Gippner develops a new analytical framework to explore the vested interests and policy debates surrounding Chinese climate policy-making.

Drawing on first hand interview data with experts and government officials, Olivia Gippner develops a new analytical framework to explore the vested interests and policy debates surrounding Chinese climate policy-making. Scrutinising the ''turf wars'' that have erupted between bureaucratic institutions competing for resources, promotions and access, this innovative book unpacks the histories and trajectories of Chinese climate policies, placing them in the context of the international politics of climate change. Gippner's new framework is deployed in detailed case studies based on the 2°C target, emissions trading and carbon capture and storage to illustrate the timing and scale of climate policy adoption. This book will appeal to researchers exploring the creation and establishment of Chinese policy and the influence from other countries, in particular the EU's climate policy promotion. Environmental politics and climate policy researchers looking to expand their research field will also benefit from this book's unique framework of analysis. Policymakers and the growing think tank community in this field will value details from first-hand interviews with Chinese government officials and climate change negotiators.

China is becoming a rising star in global economical and political affairs. Both internationally and within China itself, people have great expectations of its future role. This book aims to clarify many aspects of China’s key position in the climate change situation and policy debates. However, limited by its development stage, natural resource endowment, and other unbalanced developing issues, China is still a developing country. This book shows the reader the real China, which can provide more comprehensive solutions for future global climate regimes. This book includes research into China’s twelfth Five-Year-Plan; low-carbon city pilot schemes; policies and pathways for China’s nationally appropriate mitigation actions; China’s forestry management; China’s NGOs and climate change; the low-carbon 2010 Expo in Shanghai; carbon budget proposals; China’s green economy and green jobs; China’s reaction to carbon tariffs; China’s actions in approaching adaptation; China’s cumulative carbon emissions, and more. China’s Climate Change Policies brings together experienced experts with in-depth understanding of the scientific assessment of climate change and relevant social and economic policies, and senior experts who have participated directly in international climate negotiations. This will help the reader to better understand the 2011 Durban climate change conference, as well as China’s long-term strategy in response to climate change.

To understand China’s climate change policy is not easy, as the country itself is a paradox actor in global climate political economy: it used to take very suspicious stand on the scientific certainty of climate change, but recently it has become a signatory and firm supporter of the Kyoto Protocol; it stubbornly refuses to accept any emission cutting obligations, but has gradually taken the lead in developing renewable energies and carbon trading business; it accuses western countries of their hypocrisy and irresponsibility, but ironically maintains close cooperation with them on low-carbon projects; it fears climate mitigation commitments may hamper the economic growth, but meanwhile spends most lavishly on the research and development of clean energy and other green technologies. This book, unlike other researches which explain China’s climate policy from pure economics or politics/foreign policy perspectives, provides a panoramic view over China’s climate-related regulations, laws and policies as well as various government and non-government actors involved in the climate politics. Through analyzing the political and socioeconomic factors that influence the world’s largest carbon emitter’s participation into the global collective actions against climate change, the book argues that as a vast continental state with a mix of authoritarian politics and a quasi-liberalised market economy, China’s climate policy process is fragmented and self-defensive, seemingly having little room for significant compromises or changes; yet in response to the mounting international pressures and energy security concerns and attracted by lucrative carbon businesses and clean energy market, the regime shows some sort of better-than-expected flexibility and shrewdness in coping with the newly-emerged challenges. Its future climate actions, whether effective or not, are vital not only for the success of the global mitigation effort, but for China’s own economic restructure and sustainable development. The book is a unique research monograph on the evolving domestic and foreign policies taken by the Chinese government to tackle climate change challenges. It concludes that instead of being motivated by concern about its vulnerability to climate change, Chinese climate-related policies have been mainly driven by its intensive attention to energy security, business opportunities lying in emerging green industries and image consideration in the global climate politics.

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.

In Climate Change Law in China in Global Context, seven climate change law scholars explain how the country’s legal system is gradually being mobilized to support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in China and achieve adaptation to climate change. There has been little English scholarship on the legal regime for climate change in China. This volume addresses this gap in the literature and focuses on recent attempts by the country to build defences against the impacts of climate change and to meet the country’s international obligations on mitigation. The authors are not only interested in China’s laws on paper; rather, the book explains how these laws are implemented and integrated in practice and sheds light on China’s current laws, laws in preparation, the changing standing of law relative to policy, and the further reforms that will be necessary in response to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This comprehensive and critical account of the Chinese legal system’s response to the pressures of climate change will be an important resource for scholars of international law, environmental law, and Chinese law.

Since the early 1990s, there are two increasingly hot topics attracting numerous scholarly attentions in Chinese politics: first, it is the transformation of China's political system. Second, it is China's increasingly involvement in international regimes. Nevertheless, until now, there are only a few scholars to work out the distinctive relations between them, and even less people work on the bureaucratic politics level. By explaining and evaluating the development of policymaking coordination in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the author demonstrates the argument that international regimes have contributed to the development of coordination in Chinese Policymaking, taking the UNFCCC as a departure.

China is an integral actor in any movement that will stabilize the global climate at conditions suited to sustainable development for its own population and for people living around the world. Assessments of China’s climatic-system consequences, impact, and responsibilities need to take into account the strengths, weaknesses, and potential of subnational governments, non-governmental organizations, transnational non-state connections, and the urban populace in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. A multitude of recent local initiatives that have engaged subnational China in actions that mitigate emissions can be enhanced by powerful framings that appeal to citizen concerns about air pollution and health conditions. China Confronts Climate Change offers the first fully comprehensive account of China’s response to climate change, based on engagement with the global climate governance literature and current debates over responsibility along with specific insights into the Chinese context. Responsible implementation of any overarching climate agreement depends on expanding China’s subnational contributions. To remain fully informed about GHG-emissions mitigation, China watchers and climate-change monitors need to pay close attention to bottom-up developments. The book provides a valuable contemporary resource for students, scholars, and policy leaders at all levels of governance who are concerned with climate change, environmental politics, and sustainable urban development.