Conclusion: the rise of a carbon governmental state in China

This concluding chapter draws together findings from individual chapters and explores the lessons that other nation states could learn from China's experience of mitigation and low carbon transitions (MLCT) in the 2010s. The key lessons include the value of political leadership, the imperative of exercising the state's positive power by creating effective and multi-faceted carbon governmentalities, the strategic importance to explore synergies between MLCT and economic development, and a crucial role for power/knowledge and continuous learning. To accelerate decarbonization, China must guard against the deceleration feedback loop, comprising mitigation induced economic slow-down, negative repercussion on MLCT, and regional protectionism. Future challenges will also stem from shifting governing objects and subjects, requiring continuous adjustment to carbon governmentalities. This chapter points to the emergence of the carbon governmental state and carbon power in China and anticipates their ineluctable expansion worldwide in the decades to come in humanity's strive for carbon neutrality.