Book Review: China’s Environmental Foreign Relations by Heidi Wang-Kaeding

Abstract

In late 2022, the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity took place under Chinese presidency. The theme of this conference was ‘Ecological civilization: Building a shared future for all life on earth’. By successfully managing to include the concept ‘ecological civilization’ in the title, China’s negotiators booked a major accomplishment in the conduct of the country’s environmental foreign relations. Heidi Wang-Kaeding’s thin but rich book helps us to understand why, for China’s policymakers, the adoption of the Global Biodiversity Framework as well as the title of the conference were great achievements: China showed global leadership and deployed discursive power. Wang-Kaeding traces the origins of China’s approach to international environmental cooperation and discusses this part of the country’s foreign affairs in the context of its domestic political economy. She explores three main themes shaping China’s role in international environmental governance: treaty implementation, bilateral environmental cooperation, and the quest for international discursive power. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce both the interest groups that influence the country’s approach to international environmental cooperation and the ideological debates that contextualize Chinese environmental policymaking. Chapter 3 covers the treaty-implementation theme, discussing the implementation of two multilateral environmental agreements, that is the Montreal Protocol to reduce emissions of substances that deplete the ozone layer and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Chapter 4 investigates environmental aspects of China’s bilateral relations by studying the execution of Chinese-led projects in Laos. Then, Chapter 5 takes up the ideological thread again and ponders on the concept of ecological civilization, in particular its origins and the various interpretations, which embody both the interest-based approach to environmental affairs and the specific reading that the Chinese leadership wants to convey to both the domestic audience and the so-called global South. Ecological civilization is constructed in congruence with economic interests and exists without the participatory modes of governance in democratic, rule-based societies. Book reviews