Awareness of climate change in China is rising. Living low-carbon is another matter. In a new paper in Heliyon, Yan Wu, Thomas Krafft and I look at the distance between the two.

The study draws on 36 in-depth interviews with people involved in China’s low-carbon city transition: government officials, journalists, company managers, professors, NGO staff and residents. The interviews were held in 2022 and 2023, with field observations in Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou and Hohhot.

Four things stand out.

• Awareness is growing. More frequent extreme weather and the national dual-carbon goals have pushed low-carbon thinking into many sectors.
• Most people pick up their knowledge from short videos and advertisements on social media. Algorithms decide who sees what. The message stays shallow.
• Many people still see climate change as someone else’s problem. It does not feel like a threat to their health or their income. That is the main barrier between knowing and doing.
• Rewards and penalties can shift behaviour. But they only work with sound policy and real cooperation between stakeholders.

Some people already live low-carbon lives without ever using the term. Older people, and residents of less developed regions, are frugal out of habit or culture. Labeling these communities as “low-carbon” doesn’t help much. What really matters is respecting their way of life.

Read the full paper: Wu, Y., Martens, P., and Thomas Krafft (2026). From low-carbon awareness to low-carbon lifestyles: How far do we still need to go? A stakeholder-based analysis of low-carbon city transitions in China. Heliyon, 12 (14), e45344, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45344.