Lei Xie

International Hydropower Association

This article sheds light on the nature, forms and outcomes of China’s diplomacy over transboundary water resources. Water diplomacy bears unique and complex features and approaches for forming cooperative partnerships in the contextual settings where it is developed. By surveying the development and effectiveness of water diplomacy, it argues that...

China has forty major transboundary watercourses with neighbouring countries, and has frequently been accused of harming its downstream neighbours through its domestic water management policies, such as the construction of dams for hydropower. This book provides an understanding of water security in Asia by investigating how shared water resources...

This article investigates the motives and incentives that drive countries' diplomatic efforts in the area of inter state behaviours over international rivers. It aims to identify links between the formation of water management institutions (WMI) and the outcomes of such institutional cooperation. Three features have been identified as key to the ef...

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:78f8a45d-67a2-4491-a346-d86d98e9ec4c

In the top-down Chinese political system, flood management has traditionally been led by the government, with the general public playing a supporting role. Within this context, individual-level disaster prevention behaviors are strongly interacted with the government-public collaboration during the government-led flood management processes. This st...

The inaugural 2023 Outlook sets out a realistic roadmap to enable hydropower and other renewables to deliver against net zero targets. Key highlights: At 34 GW, 2022 marks the first time since 2016 that more than 30 GW of hydropower came online, including 10 GW of pumped storage (PSH); Hydropower currently provides over 15% of the world's electri...

This article provides an insight into the characteristics and functions of grassroots environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in China by investigating the roles that personal networks play within NGOs. Empirical findings from research on environmental NGOs in four Chinese cities illustrate that personal networks contribute significantl...

Faced with the challenges posed by enhancing the performance of national waste management policy, sub-national political authorities in China have engaged with the public and non-state actors, particularly NGOs. Across China’s multi-level administrative governance, different levels of government have consequently committed toward working with NGOs...

This study examines the effect of the intergroup social comparison approach in promoting water conservation. In an online survey experiment, participants first encountered normative persuasive messages, informative persuasive messages, or intergroup social comparison messages and then reported their willingness to conserve water, prior water usage,...

Environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) is an important development in the evolving framework of environmental governance in China. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of decided cases brought by local government, public prosecutors and environmental NGOs, this study critically examines the features, strengths, difficulties and ob...

Environmental Public Interest Litigation (EPIL) by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) emerged in China within the last decade amidst the growing focus on environmental issues and the increasing political need to bring greater public participation to the area. This article examines the current practice of EPIL by NGOs in order to understand poten...

In the context of international environmental law and International Water Law (IWL), the Ecosystem Approach (EA) has become a source of heated debate. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the negative impacts that human activities have on freshwater ecosystems. Accordingly, the protection of such ecosystems has been identified as...

Managing transboundary river basins proves a challenge for China when encountering disagreements with its neighbors that experience different political and social conditions. This paper analyses what happens when China characterizes water as a security issue. Unlike past studies that mostly understand China’s water security practices through the pr...

Engineering, economic, social sciences, geophysical, and integrated modeling studies have approached the assessment of water security in Central Asia in distinct ways. Different indicators and indexes have been introduced to assess the most vulnerable aspects of water use in this region. Until now, though, the suggested approaches are often represe...

Engineering, economic, social sciences, geophysical, and integrated modeling studies have approached the assessment of water security in Central Asia (CA) in distinct ways. Different indicators and indexes have been introduced to assess the most vulnerable aspects of water use in this region. Until now, though, the suggested approaches are often re...

A persistent challenge to deliver a socially just and ecologically sustainable development for emerging cities in non-Western countries is that legitimacy and effectiveness often hinge on the normalizing effect of international 'models' and 'standards' defined by the developed countries. In cases such as Shanghai's latest urban sustainability progr...

A persistent challenge to deliver a socially just and ecologically sustainable development in the Global South is that legitimacy and effectiveness often hinge on the normaliszing effect of interna-tional ‘models’ and ‘standards’ defined by the Global North. In cases such as Shanghai’s latest ur-ban sustainability programme, a fixation on excelling...

Transboundary water courses abound in Asia, which is experiencing risks with regards to the use of water and the sustainability of water ecology. Many of the Asian states are facing growing pressures to react to global change, with a high level of both poverty and population growth. Asia’s water politics have been explored from a range of perspecti...

Kazakhstan faces challenges to its water security. As a country that is highly reliant on water sourced from shared rivers, water policy is not only an essential element of Kazakhstan’s environmental management but also a high priority in its foreign policy agenda. This article analyzes the evolution of Kazakhstan’s policies on the sharing of water...

Series: Earthscan Studies in Water Resource Management China has 40 major transboundary watercourses with neighbouring countries. This book provides an understanding of water security in Asia by investigating how shared water resources affect China's relationships with neighbouring countries in South, East, Southeast and Central Asia. It investigat...

China-India Brief #138 (16 May 2019 - 30 May 2019) Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/research/publications/details/china-india-brief-138

China itself is vulnerable to environmental threats. With its sheer size and population, China faces immense potential threats from global warming and uneven access to natural resources. At the same time, the legitimacy of the central government heavily relies on the country’s economic performance which in turn relies on the exploitation of natural...

The impacts of China’s intensified efforts to engage in regional and global environmental governance is widely noted and debated. With rapidly increasing economic and political influence, China has been gradually changing its attitude and strategy in negotiations over some of the most challenging cross-border environmental crises. In this paper, we...

Sustainable city is a multi-faceted and contested concept which is recognized differently by different actors. Public participation is considered an essential part of sustainable urban governance, where citizens are being included in specific ways in shaping understandings of the priorities and pressures of urban development, service delivery, and...

Economic sociology views markets as organizations characterized by power relations. In this framework, competition is not only for price or quality, but also for market structures, including norms and standards. Food standards, therefore, are not only public goods or tools to protect domestic markets, but they also aim to redesign the rules of the...

With economic development our societies have become increasingly water-intensive, and continued water supplies are essential both for everyday lives and for the larger-scale goals of states. Since the 1990s water has increasingly been characterised as a security issue, and it is growing in importance for a number of countries that either share wate...

China has become the leading country to develop wind and solar energy industries. By presenting the institutional arrangement and interest constellations of China’s regulatory system of renewable energy sectors, this paper argues that the reasons for China’s swift expansion of wind and solar energy investment go beyond the notion of a state-led mod...

This article adopts the case study of resource management dispute over the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers (GBM) that cross national boundaries between China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and India. Sino-Indian diplomatic initiatives over the GBM give rise to a complex and unbalanced geographical situation, which presents the need to seek soluti...

This article adopts the case study of resource management dispute over the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers (GBM) that cross national boundaries between China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and India. Sino-Indian diplomatic initiatives over the GBM give rise to a complex and unbalanced geographical situation, which presents the need to seek soluti...

Norms and standards (especially food standards) are often analyzed according to two main dimensions: As the products of a technical/technological expertise; and as an element of regulation of markets. Using the theories of the sociology of markets and of the Economics of Convention, this article argues that far from just being neutral, technical to...

This article investigates participatory environmental management in rural China. It first summarizes the extent, role and key drivers of public participation in environmental politics in China. It then investigates main scenarios of interaction between the Chinese public and the state, in order to assess the array of possibilities for political par...

Taking international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) as the key focus, this chapter outlines the history and nature of transnational voluntary associations before proceeding to evaluate the recent transformation of their organizational forms and their shifting geographical distribution. We argue that the traditional, hierarchical model of a...

In contrast to traditional state-led governance, intensifying environmental degradation in China has seen ‘new’ forms of governance that criss-cross state and non-state boundaries. This chapter examines the interplay of political participation, environmental movements and state practices, focusing on the case of contemporary China. With a compariso...

The historical focus of renewable energy policy in the UK, as in most nations, has been on supporting deployment in renewable energy sources of electricity. The adoption of ambitious EU wide targets for renewable energy has forced greater consideration of renewable energy sources of heat (RES-H). The UK pushed ahead rapidly in considering different...

This article explores the impact of globalization on China's environmental activism by analyzing the development of Chinese environmental activism and assessing its links with the transnational environmental movement. It uses the case of Beijing to examine the characteristics, evolution, organizational development, and environmental identity of a g...

This Working Document summarises the results of the assessment of the effectiveness and economic efficiency of different support instrument options to foster the market penetration of RES-H/C in the UK. For two selected policy options related costs (mainly public transfer costs) and benefits (e.g. growth in RES-H/C capacities, avoided fuel costs, r...

Environmental decision-making is a field where justice claims are made and justice discourse articulated. This article examines and assesses the notion of environmental justice in China. It begins by reviewing literature on the dimensions of environmental injustice claims, considering both academic discussions and articulations by environmental jus...

Political opportunity structures (POSs) largely determine the different impacts of environmental and other social movements in political and policy-making processes. It is argued that POSs in capitalist and (post-)socialist countries basically share the same set of core variables. During the last fifteen years China's POS has changed dramatically i...

Major environmental degradation is a serious problem for China as the country's economy continues to grow at a phenomenal pace. In recent years environmental organisations have begun to emerge in China, and in some cases have had remarkable success in affecting policies which would have had significant adverse impacts on the environment. This book,...

The purpose of this report is to present an overall picture of the situation in the heating and cooling sectors of the United Kingdom. The report summarizes the policy and regulatory framework of the UK heating and cooling markets and gives the available statistics on the penetration rate of the different RES-H/C technologies, as well as the RES po...

Social networks and the internet both have a substantial individual effect on environmental activism in China. In this article, we speculate that social linking patterns between environmental actors, which often facilitate activism on the ground, may also exist in cyberspace in the form of an online network. The article addresses the following empi...

Social networks and the internet both have a substantial individual effect on environmental activism in China. In this article, we speculate that social linking patterns between environmental actors, which often facilitate activism on the ground, may also exist in cyberspace in the form of an online network. The article addresses the following empi...

"Despite China's repressive environment, the public, organised by environmental non-governmental or-ganisations (ENGOs), are represented in local environmental governance; their voices are articulated and policy-making is affected. Empirical findings from ENGOs in two Chinese cities demonstrate that envi-ronmental activism is not an activity with a...

This chapter explores the characteristics of emerging environmental movement organizations in China, and more specifically the role of guanxi – or personal networks – in Chinese environmental activism. While organizational networks of environmental NGOs are still weak in Chinese environmental activism, personal networks of environmental activists a...

In: Community and Ecology: Dynamics of Place, Sustainability, and Politics. / McCright, A.M., Nichols Clark, T., Oxford, UK : Elsevier, JAI Press (Research in Urban Policy 10) - ISBN 0762313099 - p. 269 - 292.