People

Weila Gong is a Climate Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley’s California-China Climate Institute. Her scholarship explores comparative climate and environmental policy and politics. Her research has been driven by understanding the political dynamics of global climate leadership across different levels of government. She focuses specifically on China, notably its low-carbon energy transitions, low-carbon cities, and greening the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as the U.S.-China Climate Cooperation on Climate Change. Her work has appeared in journals such as The China Quarterly, Environmental Politics, and Energy Research and Social Science. Her forthcoming book, Implementing the Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities, will be published by Oxford University Press.

She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program (STIA) at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, as well as a visiting Predoctoral Fellow at the Brookings-Tsinghua Center. Weila holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Technical University of Munich, as well as a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Sun Yat-sen University, China.