Book
Chinese Global Environmentalism (Cambridge Elements, forthcoming 2025)
This Element examines China’s embrace of green development on the global stage, or "Chinese global environmentalism." It traces Chinese global environmentalism's historical evolution and motivations and analyzes its deployment through the governance tools of green ideology, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and international development cooperation. It conceives of Chinese global environmentalism as a wide-ranging economic and political strategy used to unsettle traditional views of China and bolster the legitimacy of Chinese power at home and abroad. This Element argues that Chinese global environmentalism, while not without its fits and starts, is enabling China to make inroads internationally with implications for China's rise and the natural environment that are only beginning to be appreciated.
Full Bibliography of Sources Referenced in Chinese Global Environmentalism
Articles and Book Chapters
M. Davidson, V. Karplus, J. Lewis, J. Nahm & Alex Wang, “Risks of Decoupling from China on Low-Carbon Technologies,” Science (2022).
Alex Wang, “Is U.S.-China Climate Action Possible in an Era of Mistrust?” in China Questions II, Harvard University Press (2022).
Alex Wang, “Symbolic Legitimacy and Chinese Environmental Reform,” 48 Envtl. L. 699 (2018).
Discussed on the Vox Worldly podcast, Could Coronavirus Collapse Chinese Communism?
Alex Wang, “Explaining Environmental Information Disclosure in China,” 44 Ecology L.Q. 865 (2018).
Selected for 2017 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.
Alex Wang, “Chinese State Capitalism and the Environment,” in Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism (Curtis Milhaupt & Benjamin Liebman eds.), Oxford University Press (2016).
Alex Wang, “Climate Change Law and Policy in China,” in Oxford Handbook of International Climate Change Law (Kevin R. Gray, Richard Tarasofsky, & Cinnamon Carlarne eds.), Oxford University Press (2016).
Alex Wang, “Regulating Domestic Carbon Outsourcing: The Case of China and Climate Change,” 61 UCLA L. Rev. 2018 (2014).
Alex Wang, “The Search for Sustainable Legitimacy: Environmental Law and Bureaucracy in China,” 37 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 365 (2013).
Alex Wang, “China’s Environmental Tipping Point?” in China In and Beyond the Headlines (Tim Weston & Lionel Jensen eds.), Rowman & Littlefield (2012).
Alex Wang & Jie Gao (eds.), “Environmental Courts and Public Interest Litigation in China,” 43 Chinese L. & Gov’t (No. 6, Nov.–Dec. 2010).
Alex Wang & Jie Gao, “Environmental Courts and the Development of Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China,” 3 J. Ct. Innovation 37 (2010).
Alex Wang, The Role of Law in Environmental Protection in China: Recent Developments, 8 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 195 (2006–2007).
Working Papers
Three Governance Challenges in the Era of Carbon Neutrality, working paper (2021).
Banning Coal: A Modest Proposal for US-China Climate Change Cooperation, working paper, drafted for the U. Penn. Project on the Future of US-China Relations (2020).
On the Evolution of China’s Environmental Law & Governance, working paper, drafted for U. Michigan program – China’s Legal Construction Program at 40 Years Towards an Autonomous Legal System? (2019).
Reviews
Review Article, A Reply to Farber, Tsuji & Jing's Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, 83 OSLJ Online 123 (2022).
Book Review of Chinese Environmental Law by Yuhong Zhao, China Quarterly (Mar. 2022).
Book Review of Contamination: On Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen Mysteries, Los Angeles Review of Books (2020).