After the negotiations: is China on the right track to deliver its climate change commitment?

The Paris Agreement has established a new international framework to accelerate reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). Implementing the Paris Agreement is the key to enabling effective and sufficient climate action at the national level. As the world’s largest emitter of GHGs, China plays an essential role in governing global climate change. The impacts of China’s intensified efforts to engage in global climate governance are widely noted and debated. China submitted its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Long-Term Strategy (LTS) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) before the 26th Conference of Parties (COP) in Glasgow, which caused intentional disappointment as they were expecting more ambitious headline targets. However, what is more important than an ambitious pledge is an adequate and complete delivery of its pledge. Is China on the right track to deliver its climate pledge after six years since the COP21? This paper tries to solve two puzzles: first, how does a country translate its international climate commitments into national-level policies, and how does this international-national interplay affect its climate policy setting? Second, how to qualitatively measure whether a country is on the right track to deliver its international climate commitment? The discussion unfolds in two parts. Part one discusses and constructs a set of criteria to map and measure a country’s commitment delivery. Part two applies this framework to examine to what extent China’s climate policy and action since 2015 fulfilled its pledge under the UNFCCC.