Opinion | The high stakes and pitfalls of China’s drive for carbon leadership
- China’s ambitious carbon pledge may be the world’s last best hope and has great potential for renewed US cooperation
- But it also risks justifying greater authoritarianism at home, more controversial dams and exports of carbon liabilities to belt and road countries

The Middle Kingdom is eager to assume environmental leadership when the US-led world order is on shaky ground. Carbon neutrality is a bold and commendable goal.

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China vows carbon neutrality by 2060 during one-day UN biodiversity summit
Ecological civilisation marks a new frontier for Chinese Marxism. The concept is an attempt to extend Karl Marx’s “stages of development” theory, which stipulates the evolution of societies from feudalism to capitalism, towards socialism, and eventually communism.
Chinese state-sponsored intellectuals have sought to refine the classic Marxist formulation by adding ecological civilisation as a transitional phase after socialism, which China has supposedly achieved.
China therefore sees ecological civilisation as a unique theoretical contribution to Marxism – as such, it represents the party-state’s official intellectual linchpin.