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China’s “Radicalism at the Center”: Regime Legitimation Through Climate Politics and Governance

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China’s Search for Good Governance

Abstract

As China is now the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses (GHG) (IEA 2010; OECD/IEA 2009), the Chinese regime has recognized that it is vital to exert its influence on the development of global climate governance and that climate politics are useful for garnering national and international legitimacy in support of China’s strategic shift toward more sustainable growth. But the position taken by China during the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009 surprised many in the West, and some were quick to put the blame for the summit’s meager outcome on China, which was criticized for serving its own interests (Miliband 2009; Vidal 2009; Watts 2009; Dyer 2009).

This was a paper presented at the international conference on Legitimacy and Governance at the Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Science, Shanghai, July 3–4, 2010, and is to be published in a longer version in the Journal of Chinese Political Science 16, no. 2 (2011).

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Authors
  1. JøRgen Delman
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Deng Zhenglai Sujian Guo

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© 2011 Deng Zhenglai and Sujian Guo

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Delman, J. (2011). China’s “Radicalism at the Center”: Regime Legitimation Through Climate Politics and Governance. In: Zhenglai, D., Guo, S. (eds) China’s Search for Good Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337589_9

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