Qi Ye Named Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy

Washington D.C. — Qi Ye, a leading expert on China’s environment policy, has been named director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today. The Brookings-Tsinghua Center (BTC) is based in Beijing at the School of Public Policy and Management (SPPM) on the campus of Tsinghua University.

Qi Ye’s research focuses on China’s policies on climate change, environment, energy, natural resources and urbanization. His recent work examines low carbon development in China, including an annual report analyzing how China is balancing its economic growth and environmental challenges. Qi Ye also headed up the design of China’s first low carbon development plan, for the city of Baoding in Hebei Province.

“We are very pleased that Qi Ye has agreed to serve as director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center,” said Talbott. “Qi Ye is uniquely positioned to lead the Center into a new period of growth and undertake research on the critical issue of China’s energy use and its environmental impact. Qi Ye’s leadership of BTC will further strengthen Brookings’ deep bench of expertise on China and U.S.-China relations anchored by the John L. Thornton China Center.”

“Qi Ye’s appointment will strengthen further BTC’s leadership position as a university-based think tank in China,” said Xue Lan, Professor and Dean of Tsinghua SPPM. “In particular, it will enhance BTC’s role as a vital bridge between the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University and take full advantage of the diverse policy experiences at Brookings and Tsinghua to tackle some of the most daunting policy challenges we are facing today.”

Along with his duties as BTC director, Qi Ye serves as the Cheung Kong Professor of Environmental Policy and Management at Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy and Management. From 1996 through 2003, Qi Ye taught ecosystem management and climate change science at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Prior to joining the BTC, he was Director, Beijing for the Climate Policy Initiative and Director of the Climate Policy Institute at Tsinghua University.

Dr. Qi received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science in 1994 from State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and from Syracuse University in New York. A recipient of a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (1994) and National Science Foundation Fellowship (1995), Qi Ye studied agriculture, ecology and economics at Hebei Agricultural University, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Qi publishes extensively on and serves as reviewers for a number of international journals including Science, Nature and Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, published Environmental Governance in China in 2008, and co-authored a new book, The Governance of Climate Relations between Europe and Asia (2013). He is principal investigator and chief editor of the Annual Review of Low Carbon Development in China which has been published in both English and Chinese since 2010.

Founded in October 2006, the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy (BTC) is a partnership between the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and China’s Tsinghua University. Based in Tsinghua’s School of Public Policy and Management, the BTC seeks to produce high-quality and high-impact policy research in areas of fundamental importance for China’s development and for U.S.-China relations. The BTC provides research by Chinese and American scholars on economic and social issues in China’s development, hosts visiting researchers, and holds seminars, panels and conferences that bring together leading policy experts and officials from China and abroad.