Asian Perspective, Vol 50, No 3, 2026.
This study forms part of a project that examines the question of how China practises its increased activity in global environmental governance (GEG). To shed light on this, we explore biodiversity and China’s role as host for the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2022 (Kunming/Montreal). We ask how we can describe and assess China’s changing role in global biodiversity governance, an issue that has so far received scant academic attention. We develop and apply a set of indicators to classify various roles states can perform in global environmental governance: types of leadership, the intermediary, the bystander, and the laggard. Based on the indicators, we investigate how China’s activities fit with the various roles. We conclude that although, as host, China proclaimed ambitions for global biodiversity governance, its behaviour cannot be described in terms of any leadership role, rather displaying traits of the laggard and the bystander. Our methods for data collection are key actor interviews and document analysis.
