China Rises to Challenge of Battling Climate Change

A China in the World Podcast

By Wang Tao & Yang Fuqiang on December 21, 2016

With the U.S. leadership role in the fight against climate change now being called into question, China has found itself in the unique position of being a global leader of the cause. In this podcast, nonresident Carnegie-Tsinghua scholar Wang Tao spoke with Yang Fuqiang, a senior advisor on climate and energy at the National Resource Defense Council, about China’s ongoing energy transition.

Wang Tao

on December 21, 2016

Wang Tao is a nonresident scholar in the Energy and Climate Program based at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Linking the work of Carnegie’s programs in Beijing and its global centers in Washington, Moscow, Beirut, and Brussels, his research focuses on China’s climate and energy policy, with particular attention to unconventional oil and natural gas, transportation, electric vehicles, and international climate negotiation.

Prior to joining Carnegie, Wang was program manager at World Wildlife Fund China, working in the Climate and Energy Program on scenario analysis, energy policy, and climate change adaptation. From 2006 to 2009, he was a core researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Science and Technology Policy Research Department at the University of Sussex.

Wang is the author of numerous articles in the journals Climate Policy, Energy Policy, and Science of the Total Environment. He is also a regular contributor to the Chinese Financial Times, The Diplomat, People’s Daily, and China Daily. Wang contributed to the “State of the World 2009” report by the Worldwatch Institute and the United Nations Development Program’s “Human Development Report 2007–2008.” He is a contributing author to Energy for the Future and Introduction to Low Carbon Economy.

Seeing 2016 Through Eyes on China

on December 21, 2016

In June 2015, a couple dozen China-based photographers—some Chinese, some not—founded the Instagram account Eyes on China. Their goal, as member photographer Gilles Sabrié put it, was to collectively create “a diverse, dynamic, and objective view” of the country where they worked. In the final weeks of 2016, ChinaFile collaborated with the group to assemble a gallery of images that eschews major news stories, looking back on the year from a more intimate distance.

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

By John Pomfret on December 20, 2016

From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap for Chinese tea, to the U.S. warships facing off against China’s growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America’s ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.

Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world. —Henry Holt

Book Review: 

Kit Gillet, South China Morning Post (November 23, 2016)

The Economist (December 3, 2016)

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Financial Times (December 6, 2016)

Alan Yu, National Public Radio (December 11, 2016)