China’s carbon inclusion programs bring climate governance into everyday life. Through digital platforms, the internet of things, GPS tracking, and blockchains, activities such as taking public transit or recycling become measurable carbon reductions and recognizable acts of climate participation. In the process, they produce a new political subject: the carbon citizen.
The politics of carbon inclusion thus lies in how counting reorganizes the relationship between citizens and the climate crisis. Technical infrastructures turn diffuse environmental responsibility into individualized acts of participation, while defining what forms of action can be seen, valued, and rewarded. This creates serious tension. Expanding the field of climate participation can simultaneously narrow the terms on which citizens encounter the climate crisis, shifting attention from emissions, institutions, and power toward personal conduct and measurable contribution. China offers a revealing window onto a wider transformation in climate politics, as states increasingly govern through infrastructures that make citizens responsible for problems over which they have little control.
About the speaker: Yifei Li is an environmental social scientist at the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, New York University. He writes about the theory and practice of environmental authoritarianism, with a primary empirical emphasis on China. He is the lead author (with Judith Shapiro) of China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (Polity, 2020) and co-editor (with Chris Coggins) of the Handbook on China and the Environment (Sage, 2026). His scholarly work has been featured on NPR, in The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde, and other media.
This event is co-sponsored by Centre for Chinese Research and Environment and Community Cluster in the Department of Sociology.
