Thursday, June 4, 2026
In Chinese Global Environmentalism, Alex L. Wang examines China’s embrace of green development on the global stage. He traces Chinese global environmentalism’s evolution and motivations and analyzes its deployment through the governance tools of green ideology, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and international development cooperation. He conceives of Chinese global environmentalism as a wide-ranging economic and political strategy used to unsettle traditional views of China and bolster the legitimacy of Chinese power at home and abroad. The author argues that Chinese global environmentalism, while not without its fits and starts, is enabling China to make inroads internationally with implications for China’s rise and the natural environment that are only beginning to be appreciated.
In an interview conducted on June 4, 2026, Alex Wang joins Joanna Lewis to discuss China’s role on the global stage when it comes to environmental development.
Speaker
Alex Wang
Alex Wang is a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His research focuses on the law and politics of Chinese environmental governance, including Chinese climate policy, U.S.-China environmental cooperation and competition, environmental bureaucracy, information disclosure, public interest litigation, the role of state-owned enterprises in environmental governance, and symbolic uses of governance reform.
He was previously a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) based in Beijing and the founding director of NRDC’s China Environmental Law & Governance Project.
Professor Wang is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and its Public Intellectuals Program, and the Council on Foreign Relations, a board member of the Environmental Law Institute, and co-chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the California-China Climate Institute.
Moderator
Joanna Lewis
Joanna Lewis is a professor of energy and environment in the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She has over two decades of experience working on international climate and clean energy policy with a focus on China. At Georgetown she runs the Clean Energy and Climate Research Group and leads several dialogues facilitating U.S.-China climate change engagement. She is the author of Cooperating for the Climate (MIT Press) and Green Innovation in China (Columbia University Press) and has represented the United States twice as an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author.
Dr. Lewis holds a master’s and Ph.D. in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and policy from Duke University.