Book
Chinese Global Environmentalism (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025)
This is the story of China’s embrace of green development on the global stage. Its historical evolution and motivations. The underlying governance mechanisms used to implement it. And most of all its implications for China’s rise and the natural environment. China’s turn toward green development is being carried out through (i) green ideology; (ii) green diplomacy; (iii) green development cooperation, and (iv) green economic statecraft – collectively referred to as Chinese global environmentalism in this book. Ultimately, Chinese global environmentalism is a wide-ranging economic and political strategy to unsettle traditional views of China and bolster the legitimacy of Chinese power at home and abroad. While not without its fits and starts, this effort is allowing China to make inroads globally that are only just beginning to be appreciated.
Articles and Book Chapters
M. Davidson, V. Karplus, J. Lewis, J. Nahm & Alex Wang, “Risks of Decoupling from China on Low-Carbon Technologies,” Science (2022).
Alex Wang, “Is U.S.-China Climate Action Possible in an Era of Mistrust?” in China Questions II, Harvard University Press (2022).
Alex Wang, “Symbolic Legitimacy and Chinese Environmental Reform,” 48 Envtl. L. 699 (2018).
Discussed on the Vox Worldly podcast, Could Coronavirus Collapse Chinese Communism?
Alex Wang, “Explaining Environmental Information Disclosure in China,” 44 Ecology L.Q. 865 (2018).
Selected for 2017 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.
Alex Wang, “Chinese State Capitalism and the Environment,” in Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism (Curtis Milhaupt & Benjamin Liebman eds.), Oxford University Press (2016).
Alex Wang, “Climate Change Law and Policy in China,” in Oxford Handbook of International Climate Change Law (Kevin R. Gray, Richard Tarasofsky, & Cinnamon Carlarne eds.), Oxford University Press (2016).
Alex Wang, “Regulating Domestic Carbon Outsourcing: The Case of China and Climate Change,” 61 UCLA L. Rev. 2018 (2014).
Alex Wang, “The Search for Sustainable Legitimacy: Environmental Law and Bureaucracy in China,” 37 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 365 (2013).
Alex Wang, “China’s Environmental Tipping Point?” in China In and Beyond the Headlines (Tim Weston & Lionel Jensen eds.), Rowman & Littlefield (2012).
Alex Wang & Jie Gao (eds.), “Environmental Courts and Public Interest Litigation in China,” 43 Chinese L. & Gov’t (No. 6, Nov.–Dec. 2010).
Alex Wang & Jie Gao, “Environmental Courts and the Development of Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China,” 3 J. Ct. Innovation 37 (2010).
Alex Wang, The Role of Law in Environmental Protection in China: Recent Developments, 8 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 195 (2006–2007).
Working Papers
Three Governance Challenges in the Era of Carbon Neutrality, working paper (2021).
Banning Coal: A Modest Proposal for US-China Climate Change Cooperation, working paper, drafted for the U. Penn. Project on the Future of US-China Relations (2020).
On the Evolution of China’s Environmental Law & Governance, working paper, drafted for U. Michigan program – China’s Legal Construction Program at 40 Years Towards an Autonomous Legal System? (2019).
Reviews
Review Article, A Reply to Farber, Tsuji & Jing's Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, 83 OSLJ Online 123 (2022).
Book Review of Chinese Environmental Law by Yuhong Zhao, China Quarterly (Mar. 2022).
Book Review of Contamination: On Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen Mysteries, Los Angeles Review of Books (2020).