Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities

Abstract

As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to attain peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Beijing has selected numerous local areas and regions to serve as “pilots” to identify enforceable climate policy solutions. These low-carbon pilot cities have yielded mixed results. Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities examines the uneven implementation of these policy experiments in China’s centralized political system. Building on comparative case studies of four cities (Shenzhen, Nanchang, Xiamen, and Zhenjiang), process tracing, and over one hundred expert interviews across a variety of policy issues—such as low-carbon city programs, green building, emissions trading systems, and low-carbon legislation—this book argues that rather than relying on central directives, local entrepreneurial bureaucrats in China play an essential role in introducing and sustaining low-carbon policy actions, notably through the turnover of political appointees. The book challenges the notion that those appointed to top local political leadership posts (such as mayors) are primarily responsible for subnational climate leadership. It instead highlights the critical role of mid-level bureaucrats who act as implementation bridges to mobilize the political support and alliances needed to translate climate ambitions into action on the ground. They also work to facilitate the process of low-carbon policy institutionalization by crafting new climate institutions and pairing them with a group of trained personnel who are crucial to enhancing local responses to climate change in the long run. In an era of intensified geopolitics combined with national-level political gridlock, whether (and how) subnational governments can translate their climate ambitions into sustained policy actions will be essential to successfully combating global climate change. This book provides a roadmap for subnational governments moving from low-carbon policy experimentation to durable policy implementation.

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