The first joint working meeting for CCICED Special Policy Study on China’s Role in Greening Global Value Chains was held at Stanford University, California on July 6-8, 2016. The group is exploring feasible policy tools to help China achieve its goal greening of global value chains. The team’s tasks are to identify the opportunities and challenges facing China in the context of international trade, and to analyze cases in the bulk trade in soybeans, cotton and copper.

Following the outline of the team’s report, discussions centered on describing the present global trade context, identifying China’s opportunities and challenges, summing up pertinent case studies, and outlining the most promising policy tools. A draft policy recommendation framework was formulated, and suggestions for revisions of the initial draft were made.

Guest speakers Prof. Thomas Fingar of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Prof. Sonali Rammohan from Stanford’s Knight Management Center, and Prof. Chris Elliott from Climate and Land Use Alliance addressed the team on sustainable development of global value chains, and on forest stewardship certification regimes.