The BREAK—DOWN ISSUE 4: CHINA

With respect to climate and the environment, China is observed and understood in often-contradictory terms: as the world leader on green tech and as a coal-clouded bogeyman. As a country whose internal policies regarding nature have been, at different times, motivated by harmony and by conquest. And, with many Western states—the US chief among them—positioning themselves in opposition to China while reneging on their own climate commitments, as either a warning about authoritarianism or a genuine challenge to the capability of democracy to address the climate crisis. All of this and more, the contributions to Issue 4 take head on, while addressing an inescapable truth: that there is no route out of the climate crisis that does not pass through China.