One of the key puzzles of authoritarian environmentalism is its dubious effectiveness due to fragmented interests among different political and market actors, which are often found undermining centrally crafted environmental regulations and targets. China recently launched a series of institutional reforms to fix its notorious local implementation gaps on environmental policies. By setting up a stringent central inspection system and holding frequent inquiry meetings with local government leaders, Beijing aims to reconfigure central–local power relations on environmental governance. We argue that these institutional reforms are essentially transforming environmental governance in China into a highly politicized task by enforcing party disciplines rather than legal frameworks. The aim is to rein environmental officers and hold local political leaders accountable. These reforms may significantly reduce local protectionism, yet such highly politicized approach based on coercive party rules and disciplines bears the risk of weakening the role of legal enforcement and can breed discontent among local officers. Consequently, how these new reforms can achieve a desirable central–local relation for addressing China’s environmental crisis in the long run is far from certain.

China has become the leading country to develop wind and solar energy industries. By presenting the institutional arrangement and interest constellations of China’s regulatory system of renewable energy sectors, this paper argues that the reasons for China’s swift expansion of wind and solar energy investment go beyond the notion of a state-led model. It also reveals that due to a series of internal power struggles and external shocks, the current regulatory system is undergoing significant restructuring. A new policy paradigm is emerging that is largely different from the previous decades of policy orientation that centred on capacity expansion and instrumental interests for renewable energy development. The new paradigm would face tremendous challenges from existing institutions and vested interests, and it requires new set of ideologies that can help renewable energy sector to truly competing with the energy incumbents in order to bring about meaningful low-carbon energy transition in China.

Outdoor air pollution is a major environmental risk that caused over 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2016. In this article, we investigate how groups with lower social-economic status are disproportionally affected by outdoor air pollution. Based on a comparative case study of two heavily polluted urban areas around Beijing and Delhi, we find that people's economic welfare and political rights are affected disproportionally not only by toxic air pollutants, but also through various policy interventions, market activities, and social practices designed to reduce or adapt to air pollution. Drawing on the concepts of environmental justice and just transitions, we present an analytical framework for investigating the links between outdoor air pollution and social inequalities. The framework enables a better understanding of structural constraints, political constraints and protective constraints in the context of outdoor air pollution and their impacts on social vulnerabilities with particular relevance to fast industrialising countries. We also provide recommendations on how to design and implement air pollution policies and social interventions in a socially inclusive manner.