idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Despite being the world’s largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Since the early 2010s, Beijing has selected more than one hundred local low-carbon pilots at the township, municipal, and provincial levels to engage in policy experimentation. The goal is to develop policy solutions that decouple local economic growth from increased fossil fuel use.
In Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities (Oxford University Press, 2025), Weila Gong examines why some cities are more successful than others in initiating and implementing low-carbon policy actions within China’s centralized political system. She highlights the central role of entrepreneurial mid-level bureaucrats in mobilizing political support and building implementation alliances to institutionalize low-carbon policy over time.
Drawing on original research including expert interviews, comparative case studies, and process tracing of low-carbon policy experimentation in the pilot cities, Gong’s talk will open the “black box” of subnational climate policymaking in China and examine how mid-level local bureaucrats serve as essential “bridge leaders” in successful policy implementation.
Speaker:
Dr. Weila Gong is a non-resident Scholar with the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy's 21st Century China Center. She has over ten years of experience working on climate and environmental politics and policy with a focus on China. She received her PhD in Political Science from the Technical University of Munich's School of Governance and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She was recently a climate policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Moderator:
Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.
Information on participating / attending:
Teilnahme ist kostenlos.
Date:
04/14/2026 18:00 - 04/14/2026 19:15
Event venue:
Online
Online
Hamburg
Germany
Target group:
all interested persons
Relevance:
international
Subject areas:
Politics
Types of events:
Presentation / colloquium / lecture
Entry:
03/23/2026
Sender/author:
Finn Schlesselmann
Department:
Fachabteilung Kommunikation
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event81236
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