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Elizabeth Economy has for decades studied something that used to be considered somewhat obscure, but today is very much in vogue: the relationship between Chinese politics and economy to climate change and the natural world. She is now a Senior Fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she's written a number of books and influential papers examining China and climate change. She's had a fascinating career. She started out specializing in Soviet studies and took a turn working as an analyst in the CIA before getting her PhD and launching her career studying china and the environment. We kick off this conversation discussing China's decision to join the consensus at the Paris Climate Talks, and we have an extended conversation about some pressing, yet under the radar ecological and environmental challenges that China is struggling to deal with.

CITATION Bleisch, Bill. 2013. Review: China's Environmental Challenges. Asian Highlands Perspectives 28:329-338. ABSTRACT Judith Shapiro. 2012. China's Environmental Challenges. Cambridge: UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press. xxii+200pp, map, preface, index.ISBN 9780745663098 (paper 22.95USD, ebook 18.95USD). Judith Shapiro's latest ambitious work picks up the story of modern China's checkered relationship with the environment at approximately the point where her previous study, Mao's War Against Nature (2001), left off. This latest book sets out to address questions of grave importance to China and to the world. The litany of challenges – poisonous water and toxic air, scarcity of water and other resources, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity – seem nearly insurmountable, despite evidence of considerable attention from the Chinese government and from China's public, and despite the rocket-like rise of China's economic power and political influence in the world...