Weila Gong

Weila Gong is a nonresident scholar at the 21st Century China Center. A political scientist by training, she has over a decade of experience working on the politics and policies of low-carbon energy transitions. Her work focuses on climate policymaking and implementation across different levels of government, with a regional focus on China, as well as on issues such as low-carbon cities, coal transition, the Belt and Road Initiative and just transition around the world.

Gong’s work has appeared in journals such as The China Quarterly, Environmental Politics, Energy Research and Social Science, and PLOS Climate, and has been featured in the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat blog and The Harvard Crimson. Her forthcoming book, “Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities,” will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.

At the 21st Century China Center, she is leading a project that investigates the divergent paths toward coal transition, drawing on evidence from coal-rich regions in China.

Gong was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Environment and Natural Resources Program; the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; and the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She has also worked with nongovernmental organizations such as UC Berkeley’s California-China Climate Institute, and she was a visiting predoctoral fellow at the Brookings-Tsinghua Center.

Gong 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, both from Sun Yat-sen University.