Our most recent publications, written by members of the team, can be found below.

Abstract

As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China would make important contributions to the achievement of the Paris goals if it made economy-wide, strong policy interventions to combat climate change. Despite a growing number of studies on China’s climate governance, the overall landscape of China’s climate policy and its key characteristics remain underexamined.

Li, X., He, S., Gu, Y., & Sun, Y. (2025). Unpacking China’s climate policy mixes shows a disconnect between policy density and intensity in the post-Paris era. npj Climate Action, 4(1), 1–13.

Latest Academic Publications

To address this knowledge gap, we developed a dataset of 358 climate-related policies adopted by China’s central government in 2016–2022 and assessed key policy mix characteristics including policy density, balance and intensity. Our findings reveal that higher policy density does not equate to stronger action. Significant variation also exists in alignment with China’s Nationally Determined Contributions, especially in high-emitting sectors. Moreover, despite a relatively balanced mix of regulatory, economic, and informational instruments, this balance does not guarantee intensity. Our study shows challenges in China’s policy coherence and calls for stronger mechanisms to integrate national goals into sectoral policies.

SGAIN Policy Briefs and Reports

We will soon launch our SGAIN policy brief and report series. All publications in this series will be open access and shared on our website.

Non-Academic Publications

Hale, T., & Sun, Y. (2025). What Would It Take for China to be Global Environmental Leader? Global Policy Opinion & Analysis.

In this article, SGAIN Advisory Board member Thomas Hale and PI Yixian Sun call for serious research and dialogue to make China to a global environmental leader.

In this Conversation article, Dr Yixian Sun argues that China is poised to lead global climate governance when the US adopts an anti-climate position under Trump 2.0, and identifies key areas where China must strengthen its climate action both domestically and internationally.

Sun, Y. (2025). The world needs climate change leadership – it’s time for China to step up. The Conversation.

Previous Publications

Wang, Y., Liu, C., & Sun, Y. (2024). No more coal abroad! Unpacking the drivers of China’s green shift in overseas energy finance. Energy Research & Social Science, 111, 103456.

Sun, Y., Lewis, J. I., & Urpelainen, J. (2023). Environmental governance of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Environmental Politics, 32(7), 1109–1116.

Sun, Y., & Yu, B. (2023). Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity? Global Environmental Politics, 23(1), 91–116.