In this talk, Weila Gong will present findings from her book, Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities. Drawing on comparative case studies, process tracing, and over one hundred interviews with policy practitioners inside and outside the government, Gong opens the “black box” of subnational climate policymaking in China’s centralized political system. She will examine why some cities are more successful than others at initiating and sustaining low-carbon policy action, highlighting the motivations and strategies of entrepreneurial bureaucrats in building low-carbon institutionalization. Gong will also discuss the different types of local low-carbon engagement and their implications for climate leadership amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Bio: Weila Gong is a nonresident 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.

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The David Bradford Energy and Environmental Policy Seminar Series is coordinated by the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE), and co-sponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI). This seminar is also co-sponsored by the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China.

This in-person event is open to the public. Princeton University community members do not need to RSVP. Members of the general public should RSVP to ccrosby@princeton.edu and will be accommodated as space allows.

This seminar will be livestreamed at http://mediacentrallive.princeton.edu/ and videos of the recordings are posted on C-PREE's YouTube channel within a week or two after the event.

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.