China's domestic climate-change policy has changed remarkably since 1988. In the late 1980s, the central government viewed climate change as a highly scientific, foreign affairs issue, and any policies were limited to scientific investigations. A mere decade later, climate change was seen as a developmental issue. By 2007 climate change had become a national priority. Since then, climate-change policies have expanded in measure and in scope. In this article I employ the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain the policy changes. The ACF takes into account the overall sophistication of socioeconomic conditions in China as well as the climate-change advocacy coalition's communications and active use of their amassed knowledge to influence policy.