Xiamen University index: Zhejiang, Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu lead China’s 2026 carbon neutrality drive

This index matters less as a ranking than as a signal of how unevenly China's decarbonisation capacity is distributed: a 36-point spread between top and bottom provinces suggests policy ambition alone is not translating into uniform execution. The leaders share a common trait — coastal industrial bases pairing pilot zones with financial and shipping infrastructure — which implies the gap may widen rather than close. Whether lagging provinces can import those models, or whether the index itself starts shaping provincial incentives, is the open question.