Weila Gong

Ph.D. Title: The Structure of Leadership Action: Local Leadership and China's Climate Governance

Weila Gong is a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Governance at the Technical University of Munich. Her dissertation is about local leadership and China’s climate governance, and examines why some Chinese cities are more successful than the others in initiating low-carbon policy actions such as green building, emission trading system and the greening of local official evaluation systems.

Globally cities are on the front lines of dealing with greenhouse gas and air pollution issues, particularly Chinese cities that are growing rapidly. Steps Chinese cities take to become truly low carbon will ultimately determine China's success to address climate change emissions. Through the case studies of three cities - Shenzhen, Nanchang and Xiamen - the research seeks to bring a more nuanced understanding to how China’s pioneer low-carbon city model contributes to China’s climate governance and the bottom-up approach in the world.

Gong received an Master of Law (2011) and an Bachelor of History (2009) from Sun Yat-sen University, China. She has done extensive field research in China, Germany and the United States. She also serves as a reviewer for Energy Policy.

Publications

Gong, Weila. "Low-Carbon Transition in Shenzhen." In Climate Change and Cities: Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, edited by William D. Solecki Cynthia Rosenzweig, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Shagun Mehrotra, Shobhakar Dhakal, Somayya Ali Ibrahim. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Gong, Weila. "Limits to a Bottom‐up Approach in China’s Low‐Carbon Transition? Evidence from the Low‐Carbon Practices in Local China." In annual convent of international studies association. Atlanta, Georgia, 2016.

Gong, Weila. "Local Low-Carbon Transitions and Environmental Governance in China." In Annual Meeting of Political Science Association. San Francisco, CA, 2015.

Gong, Weila. "Comparative Wind Power Development in Fujian Province and Guangdong Province in China---Local Leadership, Institution, Governance." In Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference San Diego, CA, 2013.

Grant

PhD Scholarship by Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC)