As China looks to meet its energy demands, there has been a rush for coal, with prices hitting record highs in October. Despite pledges by Beijing to pull back from fossil fuels, the power crisis has exposed shortfalls in the country’s ability to...
At last year’s 19th Party Congress, Xi Jinping vowed to confront the “principal contradiction” facing Chinese society: “the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.” While...
A wave of environmental inspections in China has led to the closure of tens of thousands of businesses producing commodities from industrial chemicals to cement and rubber, pushing up prices and disrupting some global supply chains.
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said that recent environmental inspections did not hurt the country’s economy and blamed some ”inappropriate methods” conducted by local authorities for causing short–term market...
Despite extensive efforts by the Chinese government to improve air quality, including the introduction of the State Council’s “...
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, booming demand for natural resources transformed China and its frontiers. Historians of China have described this process in stark terms: pristine borderlands became breadbaskets. Yet Manchu and Mongolian archives reveal a different story. Well before homesteaders arrived, wild objects from the far north became part of elite fashion, and unprecedented consumption had exhausted the region’s most precious resources.
Presidents Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet today at Mar-a Lago, Florida, and given the tense state of U.S.-China relations and the political leanings of the Trump administration there is much at stake for cooperation between...
China will start collecting environment protection taxes in 2018 to strengthen enforcement that authorities said local governments had interfered with
Thousands head to pollution-free regions as haze descends on the country’s northern industrial heartland
With the U.S. leadership role in the fight against climate change now being called into question, China has found itself in the unique position of being a global leader of the cause. In this podcast, nonresident Carnegie-Tsinghua...
Beijing's diplomacy is increasingly green, but its international trade is getting ever more coal-black
Remember when China was the climate change outcast? What a difference a few years — and an election — can make
"I believe a wise political leader should take policy stances that conform with global trends," China's veteran climate chief said
With public assessment of their subsidies, China and the US take a big step on transparency, but inch forward on reform
The 231-clause, 13,000-Chinese character action plan for Soil Pollution Prevention and Control was released May 31 by the State Council, China’s cabinet, after undergoing some 50 draft revisions over the previous three years....
China’s central and local governments have barely made a start in trying to clean up the country’s heavily polluted water, despite fast-approaching deadlines for improvements and the launch of a comprehensive “ten point plan” over...
This week, at their biggest annual session in Beijing, Chinese lawmakers are expected to ratify the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which contains many new measures to address rampant pollution of the country’s air, soil, and water. Will the plan...
For the first time ever, a senior Chinese leader announced in his work report to the National...
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Deborah Seligsohn, former science counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and currently a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, where she studies...
Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas as well as from industrial activities grew by just 0.6 percent in 2014, according to researchers from the Global...
This week, China is crying poverty.
I am a member of a martial arts group that performs at annual temple fairs around Beijing. Half of our group are children, and almost without fail they meet at a park on the west side of town at around three in the afternoon to practice fighting...
At the end of the National Day holiday earlier this month, Beijing bid farewell to weeks of relatively good air quality and...
China is now the world’s largest importer and consumer of wood-based products. Its booming domestic market is the main driver of growth in imports, though the country is also now the world’s most important timber-processing hub. In 2013, China’s...
One way that China may meaningfully control its emissions is through the recent idea of a national carbon permit trading system, building on its carbon permit pilot programs. In China’s case, the internal debate about promulgating these actions...
As the two largest global emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States share the challenge of transforming each of their current fossil fuel–based energy systems into clean twenty-first-century energy systems that remain cornerstones...
This paper makes the case for establishing a national CO2 price in China as soon as possible. End-of-pipe pollution control technologies—a core component of China’s Air Pollution Action Plan (APAP)—can address local air pollution but not CO2...
Last November, Beijing saw a stretch of solidly clear skies and the Chinese media coined a phrase to describe them: APEC blue. After the diplomats and businesspeople gathered in China’s capital for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum...
It seems counter-intuitive that publicly available data needs grassroots activists to make it accessible. Yet, in a sea of regulations and information, official environmental information can be difficult to parse.
The risk of information...
China’s first legally binding regulations for reducing PM2.5 levels have been approved by Beijing’s municipal congress.
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600 whale sharks are being slaughtered annually at a factory near Wenzhou for foreign and domestic use.
From dead pigs in the Shanghai river to toxic smog in major cities, 2013 was a year of dramatic environmental...
China’s steel industry has been in trouble since 2011, with numerous bankruptcies nationwide. The city of Tangshan in Hebei province has been no...
The All-China Environmental Federation (ACEF), a government-backed NGO, is being urged to take legal action against the Shenhua group, one of China’s largest energy companies and also a member of the ACEF.
A subsidiary of the Shenhua group...
Nearly five weeks ago, Beijing experienced its worst day of air quality on record: Levels of PM2.5—small particulates that can cause lung, cardiovascular, and respiratory disease—soared to more than thirty times the level considered safe by the...
By embarking on a low-carbon growth path, China’s cities can help reach the country’s targets for reducing the energy and carbon intensity of its economy, and become more livable, efficient, competitive, and ultimately sustainable. Cities...
After the collapse of international climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009, Mark Lynas’ devastating article, published in the...
On May 1, 2008, the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information and the Ministry of Environmental Protection Measures on Open Environmental Information (trial) entered into effect. These regulations stand as...
The United States and China are the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters. Collaboration between the two nations, therefore, offers the greatest opportunity for achieving meaningful reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. The time is...
With the realization of China’s rapid ecological deterioration, partly caused by irresponsible logging, the Chinese government has in recent years taken a series of drastic measures to improve forest coverage. One important approach was to...
