Ye Qi

On 20 July 2021, an extreme rainstorm battered Zhengzhou in China’s Henan Province, killing 302 people, including 14 individuals who drowned in a subway tunnel and 6 who drowned in a road tunnel. As the global climate warms, extreme weather events similar to the Zhengzhou flood will become more frequent, with increasingly catastrophic consequences for society. Taking a case study-based approach by focusing on the record-breaking Zhengzhou flood, this paper examines the governance capacity of inland cities in North China for managing extreme precipitation and flooding events from the perspective of the flood risk management process. Based on in-depth case analysis, our paper hypothesizes that inland cities in North China still have low risk perceptions of extreme weather events, which was manifested in insufficient pre-disaster preparation and prevention, poor risk communication, and slow emergency response. Accordingly, it is recommended that inland cities update their risk perceptions of extreme rainfall and flooding events, which are no longer low-probability, high-impact “black swans”, but turning into high-probability, high-impact “gray rhinos.” In particular, cities must make sufficient preparation for extreme weather events by revising contingency plans and strengthening their implementation, improving risk communication of meteorological warnings, and synchronizing emergency response with meteorological warnings.

Climate policymaking in China has gone through three major phases over the course of three decades. This paper applies the concept of policy learning to an analysis of what the Chinese government has learned about climate policymaking during this period. Our analysis shows that this thirty-year history of climate policymaking can be viewed as a conceptual learning process because the Chinese government has continuously adjusted the problem definition of climate change, redefined climate policy goals, and updated climate strategies. First, the Chinese leadership has redefined climate change from a scientific and diplomatic problem, to a developmental and strategic issue, and finally to an overarching grand strategy guiding national development in the next forty years. Second, the Chinese government has fundamentally redefined its climate policy goal from avoiding climate action so as to foster economic development to reinvigorating economic development through climate action. Third, the Chinese government has updated its climate change strategy from solely emphasizing climate mitigation to a more balanced consideration of mitigation and adaptation, and from state-dominant governance processes to more diversified governance processes that involve the participation of the corporate sector and a greater a role of the law.

China’s efforts to curb air pollution have drastically reduced its concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) from 2013 to 2018 nationwide. However, few studies examined the most recent changes in PM_2.5 concentrations and questioned if the previous PM_2.5 declining trend was sustained or not. This study took a deep dive into the PM_2.5 trend for 136 northern cities of China from 2015 to early 2020 before the coronavirus disease 2019 (the COVID-19 hereafter) crisis, using ground-based PM_2.5 data notably adjusted for a key measurement method change. We find that mean PM_2.5 concentrations in northern China increased by 5.16 µg/m³ in 2019, offsetting 80% of the large reduction achieved in 2018. The rebound was more significant during the heating seasons (HS; Nov to next Mar) over the 2 years: 10.49 µg/m³ from the 2017 HS to the 2019 HS. A multiple linear regression analysis further revealed that anthropogenic factors contributed to around 50% of the PM_2.5 rebound in northern cities of China. Such a significant role of anthropogenic factors in driving the rebound was tightly linked to deep cuts in PM_2.5 concentrations in the previous year, systemic adjustment of policy targets and mitigation measures by the government, and the rising marginal cost of these measures. These findings suggest the need to chart a more sustainable path for future PM_2.5 emission reductions, with an emphasis on key regions during key pollution periods.