Global leadership and advocacy

Alex Y. Lo () and Chen Xiang ()

Chapter 4 in China's Climate Policy, 2025, pp 60-83 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines China's evolving aspirations for leadership in international climate change action, beginning with an overview of its strategic engagement in global negotiations. It offers explanations for a recent shift to advocating climate change adaptation, an imperative that China did not actively engage in the early years of the Kyoto Protocol. The chapter then explores three key strategies guiding China's global advocacy. First, it highlights adaptation over mitigation, framing itself as a developing nation under the common but differentiated responsibility principle rooted in the Kyoto Protocol era. Second, it applies “directional leadership” in two ways: promoting Nature-based Solutions to address climate challenges and exporting technology-driven approaches to the Global South. Third, it advances a “greener” Belt and Road Initiative by offering more “small yet smart” loans targeting the Global South and attention to environmental, social, and governance safeguards. While this new approach holds significant potential, the chapter concludes that uncertainties persist regarding China's ability to reshape longstanding North–South power imbalances or weather-shifting geopolitical challenges.

Keywords: Climate leadership; Belt and Road Initiative; Nature-based solutions; Directional leadership; Climate adaptation; Geopolitical challenges (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035341252
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035341269.00011 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23677_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().