China's Climate Policies: Climate Targets and Implementation Mechanisms

Abstract

China leads the world in both greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy deployment. In recent years, China has committed to increasingly ambitious climate goals and is on track to meeting these goals. This article provides a systematic review of China's climate policies and their impacts. We argue that China's climate policies can be classified into two components: binding climate-related targets and a mixture of command-and-control and market-based implementation mechanisms. We discuss how the mechanisms have performed and the lessons they offer for the future climate policies of China and other countries.