ABSTRACT
China's environmental policy has to cope with these challenges in order to balance the requirements of economic development and welfare on the one side and the negative environmental effects and public interest on the other side. This chapter provides an overview of the background and institutional arrangements as well as an analysis of the main drivers for environment and energy policy in China. It introduces the current and persistent main challenges, and briefly recalls the policies and institutional arrangements and main actors for Chinese environmental and energy policy since the turn of the century. The chapter analyses the main challenges of China's environmental and energy policy in the twenty-first century, i.e. economic growth and rapid urbanization, as well as China's vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change and its contribution to their global mitigation. It provides an overview of the synergies of energy security and climate change policies and shows the interdependencies between different energy and environmental policy measures.
