This commentary was first published in The Hill.

The future sustainability of the Earth cannot do without the coordinated actions of its two largest carbon polluters — the United States and China.

The most recent highlight in that realm is the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s at the UN climate change conference COP26 in November 2021. The joint statement, which came during a turbulent time in U.S.-China relations, was both surprising and valued. The declaration reaffirms both nations’ commitment to “tackling [climate change] through their respective accelerated actions in the critical decade of the 2020s, as well as through cooperation in multilateral processes.”

The declaration also calls for “concrete actions in the 2020s to reduce emissions aimed at keeping the Paris Agreement-aligned temperature limit within reach,” including in the areas of methane reduction, decarbonization and forest protection. 

While the declaration represents a promising step forward and offers reassurances about new momentum for sustained future cooperation, it offers few details regarding concrete plans, nor the opportunities and challenges to enact and implement those plans.

Last fall, we at Stanford University partnered with Peking University to convene a series of discussions on a broad range of themes around U.S.-China collaboration on climate change, such as global sustainable finance, corporate climate pledges, as well as opportunities and challenges for the acceleration of decarbonization in both countries in general — both nationally and by sector — with particular emphasis on power, transportation and industry. The outcomes and insights were synthesized in a report on how to accelerate decarbonization in China and the United States, in which we highlight two urgent recommendations to facilitate constructive cooperation between both nations as they tackle growing environmental challenges.

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First, we need open-science research and development (R&D) collaboration.

Second, we need to be explicitly cognizant of political and institutional constraints.

This is necessary in order to translate promises into progress while protecting social benefits and their equitable distribution amid the green energy transition. As noted in both the joint declaration and our report, bilateral dialogues so far remain very high-level. We need future discussions and workshops at the sectoral and local levels to develop concrete plans. In enacting and implementing concrete plans, political and institutional constraints can pose real obstacles, as demonstrated by China’s past and ongoing efforts to control air pollution.

Hence, strong support from both national and local governments will be critical. As a first step, we need to gain a good understanding of who the relevant actors are in both policymaking and implementation and the incentives they face.

In this period of transition when there are still regional mismatches between energy supply and demand, it is too easy to let short-term needs push climate mitigation goals to the bottom of the barrel to address regional energy shortages. In both countries policymakers and those charged with implementation face multiple and sometimes conflicting goals. The prioritization of goals is shaped by incentive structures. Fostering incentive structures conducive to decarbonization is particularly important during the transitional period when consensus around goals and priorities is less clear. 

Furthermore, it is time to standardize standards. A recurring theme across our discussions is the need for shared, clearly specified regulatory frameworks and standards across both nations. Harmonizing standards will expedite trade, validation, accounting, climate pledges and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) evaluation.

Only if there is standardization can organizations be required to follow unified disclosure practices for making available important information like the amount of carbon emitted. We need to make and implement more legislation to encourage a faster pace of decarbonization, and having unified terminology and standards is conducive to both effective carbon legislation and policy implementation. Common terminology and standards will provide a basis for carbon legislation. Having clearly stipulated standards and procedures can also make implementation easier and more straightforward. 

Last but not least, we are hopeful about the future of U.S.-China cooperation on climate change and believe that universities can play a significant role in the global energy transition. Universities are often the birthplaces of innovative technology, training grounds for talent from across the globe, as well as conveners of bilateral and multilateral dialogues. We hope the governments on both sides of the Pacific will work together to hammer out the needed details to build the momentum and make a real impact in the fight against global climate change. 

Shiran Victoria Shen is the W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell national fellow at Stanford University’s  Hoover Institution, as well as an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of Virginia. 

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas professor of Chinese politics, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, as well as the director of Stanford University’s China Program. She is also the Lee Shau Kee director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. 

Yi Cui is the director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, as well as professor of materials science and engineering. He is a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and professor, by courtesy, of Chemistry, Stanford University. 

Liang Min is managing director of the Bits & Watts Initiative of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. 

Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce that NPR's Beijing Correspondent Emily Feng is the recipient of the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific region. The award recognizes Feng’s eloquent and influential reporting on China amid unprecedented hurdles facing foreign journalists seeking to report in and on the country. She will receive the award at a public ceremony in fall 2022.

Feng, who joined NPR in 2019, roves around China through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. She contributes to NPR’s newsmagazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms. Previously, she served as Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times, covering a broad range of topics, including human rights and technology.

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During her tenure at the Financial Times, she began to report extensively on the region of Xinjiang, becoming the first foreign reporter to uncover that China was separating Uyghur children from their parents and sending them to state-run orphanages, and discovering that China was introducing forced labor in Xinjiang’s detention camps.

“Emily Feng’s reporting is crucially important journalism that pushes the industry forward and tells powerful stories of Chinese citizens amid intense pressure by the Chinese government over investigative stories on the country,” said Gi-Wook Shin, Shorenstein APARC director. “We applaud her courage and outstanding work and are delighted to recognize her with the Shorenstein Journalism Award.”

Presented annually by APARC, the Shorenstein award, which carries a $10,000 cash prize, honors the legacy of APARC’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. The selection committee for the award, which unanimously chose Feng as the 2022 honoree, noted that her work embodies the purpose of the award, stating that her reporting on China’s persecution and treatment of the Uyghurs “stands out as some of the most stunning of the past few years.”

The committee members are William Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy; Anna Fifield, editor of the Dominion Post and Wellington editor for New Zealand's news site Stuff, who is also the recipient of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award; James Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication, chair of the Department of Communication, and director of the Stanford Journalism Program, Stanford University; Louisa Lim, senior lecturer, Audio-Visual Journalism Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne; and Raju Narisetti, Publisher, McKinsey Global Publishing, McKinsey and Company.

Feng's reporting has let her nerd out over semiconductors and drones, travel to environmental wastelands, and write about girl bands and art. She has filed stories from the bottom of a coal mine, the top of a mosque in Qinghai, and from inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in. Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018, recognized by the Amnesty Media Awards in February 2019, and won a Human Rights Press merit that May. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China earned her another Human Rights Press Award, was recognized by the National Headliners Award, and won a Gracie Award. She was also named a Livingston Award finalist in 2021.

Feng graduated cum laude from Duke University with a dual B.A. degree from Duke's Sanford School in Asian and Middle Eastern studies and in public policy.

Twenty journalists previously received the Shorenstein award, including most recently Swe Win, editor-in-chief of the independent Burmese news organization Myanmar Now; Tom Wright, co-author of the bestseller Billion Dollar Whale and a veteran Asia reporter; and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, CEO and executive editor of the Philippines-based news organization Rappler.

Information about the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award ceremony and panel discussion featuring Feng will be forthcoming in the fall quarter.

This commentary first appeared in Foreign Policy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a double disaster for President Vladimir Putin, as he faces a poorly performing military combined with an inability to shield his country from economic punishment. Both of these possibilities historically have also been sources of apprehension for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But China’s leadership turned its anxiety into action about 10 years ago, deliberately working to fix many of the problems and minimize the risks currently plaguing Russia in Ukraine.

One result is that the Chinese military is more likely to perform well even though it has not fought a war since 1979, when it lost thousands of troops in a punitive but brief invasion of Vietnam. Adding to that, China’s economy is both far larger and deliberately more diversified than Russia’s. A sanctions effort like the one presently aimed at Russia would be much harder to sustain against China. These two observations do not mean deterrence won’t hold, only that the unfolding events in Ukraine will likely do little to make Beijing more cautious.

Nearly everyone overestimated Russia’s military capabilities—including probably Putin himself. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s air-ground coordination has been ineffective, and Russian forces have shown risk-adverse tendencies in the air. Russia has also struggled with logistics and keeping its military supplied. Notably, it appears that Russia acted on bad intelligence and therefore did not believe initial strikes that maxed out its firepower were necessary. Furthermore, many Russian weapons platforms are outdated (for example, its Cold War-era tanks), and modern Su-57 fighter jets and T-14 Armata tanks only exist in comparatively small numbers.

The Chinese military used to clearly exhibit the same deficiencies. But over the past decade, it has embraced significant reforms, creating a much more capable fighting force that should give even the United States pause.

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First, while Russia allowed its conventional capabilities to atrophy, Chinese military spending has exploded over the past three decades, increasing by 740 percent (in comparison to Russia’s 69 percent) from 1992 to 2017. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China spent almost four times on its military in 2020 than Russia ($244.9 billion to $66.8 billion). In 1999, less than 2 percent of its fighter jets were fourth-generation, 4 percent of its attack submarines were modern, and none of its surface ships were. Twenty years later, not only did China have much more of everything, but the majority was the most advanced, modern versions available—with China exhibiting advantages over Russia, even in combat aircraft, a traditional area of weakness for China.

Indeed, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commentators often refer to China’s economic might as one of the reasons their military would outperform Russia’s—Russia has been “stingy” with its military modernization and production of precision-guided munitions primarily because of a lack of resources. By contrast, China has more than 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles, making the PLA Rocket Force the world’s largest ground-based missile force. Estimates place the number of missiles positioned against Taiwan alone at around 1,000.

Russia’s poor performance does remind us that it takes more than just a lot of fancy systems to win a war (though having more advanced systems and more of them surely would have helped). The human element of Russia’s failures is front and center. Putin probably did not have an open and honest communication channel with the military, which was fearful of providing unfavorable information to the erratic leader. Russian troops were largely considered incompetent, but Putin thought superior technology could overcome human deficiencies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping identified similar training and competency issues in the PLA 10 years ago. But under his command, the PLA has been proactively implementing significant reforms to avoid similar pitfalls. And unlike Putin, who apparently believed technology could overcome deficiencies in personnel, Xi came to the opposite conclusion. When he came to power, he took one look at the military and recognized that with all its fancy equipment, the PLA probably could not fight and win wars and perform the missions it had been assigned. Of particular importance, according to China’s national military strategy, was to fight local wars under informationalized conditions. This meant that the network between platforms and people—the ease of connectivity—was the main feature of modern warfare. China needed the best equipment; an advanced command, control, computers, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) network; and tons of precision-guided munitions. But perhaps most importantly, it needed troops that could leverage these systems to conduct seamless operations across services and top-down through the chain of command.

What followed was a series of slogans—the two incompatibles, two inabilities, two big gaps, the five incapables—all designed to point out the organizational and personnel issues of the military and focus leadership attention and resources on fixing the issue. A massive military reorganization followed with moves such as reorganizing effective combat units to be smaller so that they can mobilize more quickly and can remain self-sufficient for long periods of time. This means, in contrast with the Russian military, the PLA will likely have less reliance on generals at the front lines. China also established theater commands to facilitate joint operations and prioritized realism in its military exercises to help it prepare for real combat. Part of all of this was Xi’s demand that the military communicate its failures and weaknesses so that they could be addressed. Moreover, to improve command and control, China has moved toward engaging in multidomain joint operations all while standing up a new joint operations center that will ensure that, unlike with the Russian military, orders will be communicated and understood at the lowest levels. Indeed, the main reason that Xi has not yet made a play for Taiwan is likely his desire to hone this command and control structure and practice joint operations in realistic conditions for a few more years—a cautious and pragmatic approach that the situation in Ukraine only encourages further.

The PLA itself acknowledges that it still has some distance to go with training, particularly with regard to joint operations, but it looks as if the hard work is paying off. The complexity and scale of China’s national military exercises are eye-opening. It takes a great deal of planning, synchronization, and coordination to take service-level operations to the joint level. China appears to have made great strides in this area. The United States has observed, for example, China executing deep-attack air operations in its exercises that have combined intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) with multi-domain strike; lift for rapid mobility and advanced fighter manuevers. Russia has relied heavily on artillery and tanks, now and historically, while the PLA is showing a more balanced approach to combined arms operations.

For all these reasons, we should not expect the Chinese military to perform as poorly in its first real military operation since 1979. The PLA is structurally superior to the Russian military. And the Chinese know it. Granted, it’s hard to know whether some of the outlandish claims in the Chinese media are true—that the PLA Air Force would actually “be able to take out the Ukrainian air force in one hour.” But one thing is for certain—the Chinese military is learning lessons from Ukraine, whether it is to stockpile more precision-guided munitions, ensure solid command and control, or cut off internet access to prevent the leaking of information to the West, which will only serve to improve its warfighting capability in the future.

In February 2022, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin declared a partnership with no limits. Soon after, Russia invaded Ukraine, complicating the relationship of the two nations.

In conversation  WBUR's "On Point" with Meghna Chakrabarti, Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro discussed the dynamics of the China-Russia relationship, and the implications of the war in Ukraine. 

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According to Mastro, what China wants from the Russia-Ukraine War is a quick resolution through a negotiated settlement that provides Russia security assurances from the West and China legitimacy if they need to use force over Taiwan. "The China-Russia alignment is extremely deep," said Mastro "but the scope [of their security partnership] is very narrow." At present, Russia helps China challenge U.S. hegemony in Asia, but "we shouldn't expect China to be forthcoming about support for Russia in Ukraine."

Mastro also spoke to Fox 2 KTVU following a two-hour phone call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Biden Warned Xi of ‘Consequences’ if China aids Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mastro remarked that China has "not come out in condemnation of this blatant use of force and China can't stand on the sidelines and expect for its reputation not to be tarnished if they continue to support Russia, even implicitly."

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Mastro suggested that this moment has serious implications for the U.S.-China great power competition and that success in the U.S.-China relationship "isn’t about [the two powers] but about [their] relationships with the rest of the world...the United States is trying to compete with China economically, politically, and militarily around the world and [the United States has] commitments everywhere...China is very focused on the region, at least militarily, and that makes it difficult for the United States to compete."