Low carbon plot: climate change skepticism with Chinese characteristics

Current sociological literature on climate change skepticism almost exclusively focuses on the discourses in the Western World. This paper seeks to broaden the scholarship by examining the Chinese case, and to bridge this body of literature with nationalism. Through critical discourse analysis of Chinese publications, I demonstrate the existence of an undercurrent of climate change skepticism in China. The main discursive patterns follow a conspiracy theory that sees climate change as a western plot to constrain China’s development space and to create a new site for financial accumulation. The result suggests that Chinese climate change skepticism stems from identity politics and mistrust towards Western countries. In China’s climate skepticism discourse, science also becomes a subject of national identity politics. This paper calls for a sociology of climate change ‘knowledge’ to move forward the study of climate change skepticism and denialism.