Law professor Alex Wang credited China for its advancements in green technology but criticized its shortcomings in ecological protection at a book talk Wednesday.

The talk was divided between Wang’s explanation of his book titled “Chinese Global Environmentalism” and a conversation between him and Mary Nichols, the former chair of the California Air Resources Board. The event was organized by the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment and took place at the UCLA School of Law.

China is the second-most populous country in the world and produces more carbon emissions than any other nation.

Wang said his book was inspired by a shift in Chinese policies and attitudes toward the environment over the past 20 years, which he noticed when working as an environmental lawyer in China.

China is implementing green development strategies – meaning its government is incorporating environmentalism into its developmental and economic priorities, he said.

China saw clean energy as an opportunity to invest in an area with no strong global competitors, Wang added.

“It’s not only in the making of goods that then you sell to the rest of the world, like solar panels or wind turbines or electric vehicles – it also manifests itself in the way China behaves in climate negotiations,” Wang said.

China had a defensive stance on climate negotiations 15 years ago, aiming to protect its industrial freedom as a developing nation, Wang said.

At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, China refused to agree to controlled emissions of greenhouse gases, arguing that it needed to first focus on reducing poverty levels and improving its economy before tackling carbon emissions.

But China has shifted to an affirmative approach, Wang said, and is now a forerunner at UN climate change conferences where the country showcases its electric vehicles and other new green technologies.

China has also used its environmental policies to build relationships with other countries such as Chile, Wang said. He added that Chile exports copper and lithium to China and purchases Chinese clean energy technologies, such as solar panels and electric buses.

“These types of investments shift the kind of geopolitical dynamics,” he said. “Increased Chinese economic investment in South America has paid off in greater alignment in those countries in UN General Assembly votes.”

China’s economic motivations for green development sometimes lead to environmental conflict, Wang said.

China’s dam-building in Southeast Asia, for example, creates clean power – but also prevents silt from moving through the river, which is essential for downstream fisheries and agriculture in countries like Laos and Vietnam, Wang added.

“It creates cheap power,” he said. “But it also has these ecosystem impacts that Chinese leaders and companies have not been as willing to grapple with and have sometimes really attacked the critics that raise these concerns.”

However, Chinese economic data has repeatedly come under international scrutiny, with skeptics claiming that the reported statistics are incomplete and unnaturally smooth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Wang said during the book talk that while he heard anecdotes of local officials cheating their emission monitoring data when he worked in China, NASA satellite data can verify air pollution improvements, and falsifications on statistics like greenhouse gas emissions can easily be debunked.

The tables have turned in terms of which countries promote global environmentalism, Wang said. While the United States used to push China to lower its carbon emissions, China is now actively promoting renewable energy and the U.S. is opposing it, he added.

President Donald Trump has rolled back several climate protections in his second term, including pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement and rolling back the Environmental Protection Agency’s research-backed finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health.

“We could take a cue from China,” Wang said. “We can also build our industrial strength and economic strength by pursuing these goals (renewable energy).”

Chole Lee, a first-year chemical engineering student, said she enjoyed learning about environmentalism from a global perspective. She added that Wang’s speech taught her about how China shifted the environmental protections from a national weakness to a strength and a source of diplomatic power.

John Gueriguian, a fourth-year chemical engineering student, said he was fascinated by how much influence China’s green technology exports can have in geopolitics.

“For some time, we (the U.S.) were a benchmark, a leader in environmentalism, and Europe was too,” Gueriguian said. “Now, it seems like China is that benchmark.”

Gueriguian added that China’s environmental campaigns seemed to focus mainly on energy and pollution but overlooked ecological damages.

Wang said despite the U.S.’s federal stance, California aims to decarbonize and is working with China to do so. He added that the state also has goals to build its own clean energy industries that can serve as an alternative to Chinese supply chains.

“UCLA students presumably will be part of that story going forward – working in the companies and the law firms that help build clean energy projects,” Wang said.