As I approach the halfway point in my six-week research process with Laidlaw, I’ve taken some time to reflect on both the progress I’ve made and the challenges I’ve encountered throughout my research:
As of this week, I have finally finished the bulk of my literature review and completed compiling an extensive database of environmental legislation and relevant scientific statistics (carbon emission data, etc) for both the US and China. With the assistance of assigned readings and frequent discussions with my mentor, Professor Battistoni, I have also developed a strong political theory framework which I am excited to use in my analysis.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I have finally narrowed down my research topic into a much more specific area: the evolution of China’s environmental policies and action plans on coal use and coal plant construction during and after the COVID-19 pandemic (since 2020). Initially, I intended to examine China’s environmental policies more broadly, but after completing my literature and policy review, I realized that focusing on coal would be more feasible within the next three weeks and more valuable to the overall research. Coal is a particularly revealing case: it has long been the backbone of China’s economy, playing a key role since the Great Leap Forward and still accounting for about half of the country’s primary energy consumption. Despite its high emissions—especially compared to natural gas—and China’s ambitious climate targets, coal has yet to be replaced by more emissions-friendly energy sources. I suspect this persistence reflects deeper tensions, such as conflicts of interest between industry and government and contradictions within China’s state-capitalist model—issues I intend to explore further in my research.
Throughout this research process, the biggest challenges I’ve faced have been largely cultural, stemming from my limited familiarity with China’s complex political history, government structure, and cultural taboos. For instance, while building my policy database, I struggled to determine which legislative body had approved each policy, given the many layers of government. It was also difficult to distinguish between formal laws and non-binding action plans, or to gauge the true impact of each policy. Although my Chinese reading skills were helpful at times, I often found the technical language in official documents too advanced to fully understand. Finally, it’s been challenging to find objective sources on these policies, as many are authored by high-level CCP officials who emphasize success metrics while overlooking policy shortcomings.
In the next three weeks, I plan to narrow down a political theory framework through which to analyze a core set of coal-related laws. I’ll dive deeper into key statistics, identify my most relevant sources, and begin drafting my final analysis.