Bradford Seminar: “Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities”
Weila Gong, scholar for UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy’s 21st Century China Center, will present “Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities.” This seminar will be held in-person (PUID holders only) and available via livestream (open to all).
In this talk, 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.
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.
This event is part of the David Bradford Energy and Environmental Policy Seminar Series organized by the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and co-sponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI).
Bradford Seminar: “Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities”
Event Date
Mon, Feb 9, 2026 ・ 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location
300 Wallace Hall; Online via Media Central Live
Weila Gong, scholar for UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy’s 21st Century China Center, will present “Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities.” This seminar will be held in-person (PUID holders only) and available via livestream (open to all).
In this talk, 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.
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.
This event is part of the David Bradford Energy and Environmental Policy Seminar Series organized by the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and co-sponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI).
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