Abstract:
This book systematically analyzes how and why China has expectedly lost and then
surprisingly gained ground in the quest to solve the complicated environmental
problem of air pollution over the past two decades.
Yuan Xu shines a light on how China’s sulfur dioxide emissions rose quickly
in tandem with rapid economic growth but then dropped to a level not seen for
at least four decades. Despite this favorable mitigation outcome, Xu details how
this stemmed from a litany of policy stumbles within the Chinese context of no
democracy and a lack of sound rule of law. Throughout this book, the author
examines China’s environmental governance and strategy and how they shape
environmental policy. The chapters weave together a goal-centered governance
model that China has adopted of centralized goal setting, decentralized goal
attainment, decentralized policy making and implementation. Xu concludes that
this model provides compelling evidence that China’s worst environmental years
reside in the past.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese
environmental policy and governance, air pollution, climate change and sustainable
development, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in these fields.
