This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Michael Davidson, a leading scholar on China’s environmental policy, who holds joint appointments at UC San Diego as an assistant professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering. Michael unpacks recent announcements out of Beijing, including Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 decision to cease all funding for coal-fired power plants outside of China, and explains the linkage between China’s push for non-fossil energy and the recent power shortages that have affected 20 provinces. He also explains China’s new emissions trading scheme, or ETS, and discusses what China still needs to do to meet the ambitious targets set by Xi Jinping last year: reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
3:26 – Xi Jinping’s announced end to funding for coal-fired generators outside China at UNGA
12:00 – China’s recent power outages and their relationship to emissions reduction
19:32 – The basics of China’s new emissions trading scheme
38:37 – Coercive environmentalism, command-and-control, and market instruments
47:15 – Can U.S.-China competition result in a “race to the top” in emissions reduction?
54:24 – GHG reduction and the Red New Deal
A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Michael: The Chair, a Netflix show starring Sandra Oh.
Kaiser: Bewilderment, the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, Richard Powers
Mentioned in the show: Valerie Karplus’s paper on China’s ETS; New York Times Magazine piece on The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
China and the American "great power opportunity," with Ali Wyne
Another Taiwan Straits Crisis? CIA veteran John Culver weighs in
The Sinica Network presents the Café & Seda (Coffee & Silk) Podcast
Prototype Nation: Silvia Lindtner on what drives Chinese tech innovation, and how tech drives Chinese statecraft
Semiconductors and the unspoken U.S. tech policy on China, with Paul Triolo
Historian Andrew Liu on COVID origins: Orientalism and the "Asiatic racial form"
Yale's Jing Tsu on the characters who modernized Chinese characters
Taiwan: Saber rattling, salami slicing, and strategic ambiguity, with Shelley Rigger and Simona Grano
A Comprehensive Mirror: James Carter's "This Week in China's History" column marks two years
Mental health under lockdown: A clinical psychologist in Shanghai
Covering the U.S.-China relations beat with the FT's Demetri Sevastopulo
Too much of a good thing? Connectivity and the age of "unpeace," with the ECFR's Mark Leonard
The rise and fall of U.S.-China scientific collaboration, with Deborah Seligsohn
Chinese public opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Yawei Liu and Danielle Goldfarb
China and India share a contested border and an uncomfortable neutrality in the Ukraine War — but not much else
China, Europe, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Marina Rudyak
Inside the Shanghai lockdown, with SupChina's own Chang Che
After the War: Scenarios China faces when the Russo-Ukrainian War eventually ends
Susan Thornton on the urgent need for diplomacy with China over the Russo-Ukraine War
Chinese international relations scholar Dingding Chen on Beijing's position in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free