‘Dual Carbon Goals’ enhances policy integration: analysing recent changes in China’s national climate policy

Abstract

ABSTRACT China recently set out to achieve the goal of reaching carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, the so-called ‘Dual Carbon Goals’ (DCGs), making climate change enjoy the highest-ever political salience. The DCGs entail a new policymaking paradigm under which climate goals are required to be integrated into all relevant sectors. Based on a quantitative content analysis of policy documents enacted by 41 national governmental agencies, we found that the DCGs has led to significant increase in the level of climate policy integration (CPI). Despite the overall rise of CPI, our findings revealed notable differences in CPI among governmental agencies. We proposed a three-factor framework to explain what drives the variance in CPI. Through a chronological analysis, this study examined the evolution of China’s national climate policy portfolios across 12 policy domains. Our results showed that China’s sectoral climate policy has experienced dramatic changes in both scope and scale. This study provided an in-depth understanding of Chinese climate policy mix to mitigate climate change and contributed to existing literature by filling a research gap – the lack of empirical analysis on whether, how, and to what extent CPI occurs in Chinese context.