China has laid a foundation for adapting to climate change through its national policy frameworks. Yet a far more ambitious policy response is required to deal with escalating extreme weather.
To prevent mounting human and economic losses, a dramatically scaled up, more coordinated approach is needed, one that leverages technological innovation and empowers local leadership. As well as strengthening the national response, such an approach can deepen global cooperation to cope with a problem indifferent to political borders.
The acceleration of the climate crisis is hard to ignore. In March, the mercury in Beijing touched 30°C earlier in the year than it had for 66 years. In June, China issued its first red flood alerts of 2025, as 27 rivers across Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou rose above warning levels.
In mid-July, days of record-breaking heat impacted a part of China home to some 200 million people, pushing national electricity demand to an all-time peak.
Then, at the end of July and into early August, torrential rain across the north claimed the lives of over 70 people and forced the evacuation of 80,000 more. While these major events attracted significant media coverage, China was also affected by bouts of drought, hailstorms and localised fires.
Natural disasters during the first half of 2025 affected over 23 million people, and resulted in direct economic losses of CNY 54.1 billion (US$7.6 billion).
A strong foundation, but not enough
China is acutely aware of the need to scale up its adaptation and resilience measures to cope with extreme weather. It has made significant progress in targeting and prioritising this area in its national policy frameworks, notably the National Action Plan on Climate Change (2014-2020) and the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035.
The action plan, launched in 2014, outlined key policies and targets for addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation measures. These included reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving resilience to climate change, promoting low-carbon development, and strengthening international cooperation, all by 2020. But though comprehensive, the plan was quite general and lacked specificities around adaptation-policy measures.
The adaptation strategy, released in 2022, strengthened adaptation policy across key areas. It emphasised early-warning systems, risk management and clear adaptation priorities in critical sectors like water, agriculture and health. It also aimed to strengthen regional coordination, interdepartmental collaboration, financial and technological support, and international cooperation.
While the strategy outlined important focus areas, it lacks a clear roadmap for implementation that demonstrates a coordinated approach between local and national governments. With many targets set far in the future, the urgency of current climate risks calls for more immediate action.
China is nonetheless leveraging its strengths in technological innovation to identify opportunities for faster progress. Most notably it is using AI to enhance climate risk management in response to extreme weather events.
How is China applying AI?
Acknowledging the difficulty of predicting extreme weather, China has turned its attention to deploying AI to help meteorologists improve forecasting accuracy. Tracking severe events more precisely should enable better early warnings and help citizens prepare for them.
Central government approaches to climate adaptation often overlook the distinct climate risks faced by China’s provinces and municipalities. Empowering local leaders to tailor responses is therefore critical to ensuring adaptation efforts are comprehensive, context-specific and practical. Recent AI-driven initiatives mark a promising shift toward localised climate-risk management.
In 2024, state media reported that Fengwu, a forecasting system developed by Shanghai AI Laboratory, had pushed effective global weather forecasts beyond a 10-day window. More recently, in July this year, the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Service launched the Lingxi AI tool to assist forecasters with their analysis and decision-making. Lingxi integrates real-time and historical weather data with “local extreme-weather knowledge” to provide risk warnings and recommendations, explains China Meteorological News.
Although both systems are still evolving, they could prove instrumental in deepening understanding of localised climate threats. Fengwu, for example, has been leveraged to improve early preparedness to typhoons in Shanghai. While further accuracy improvements are needed, Fengwu illustrates the value of localised AI models for prioritising responses to local climate impacts. National adaptation strategies can clearly be complemented by regional innovation.
While cities are increasingly adopting AI to tailor extreme-weather predictions to local needs, there still remains a clear need for national-level systems that provide larger-scale tracking and understanding.
At the World AI Conference in Shanghai this July, the China Meteorological Administration launched Mazu, a global early warning initiative that covers many types of disasters in one system, including storms, floods and heatwaves. According to Prevention Web, it aims to “provide early-warning technical support, strengthen risk-assessment systems, enhance capacity building, and develop cooperative models and mechanisms.”
While Mazu will benefit China domestically through comprehensive weather tracking, it has also been designed to help fill critical gaps in the early-warning capabilities of other countries. Mazu is borne from an understanding that extreme weather is a global challenge that requires cross-border collaboration and shared technological solutions.
The shared challenge of extreme weather
As climate impacts become more destructive, adaptation and resilience will require not only local and national action in China but regional and international cooperation. Extreme-weather events have transboundary impacts. In 2024, Typhoon Yagi, which did extensive damage in south China, caused almost 600 deaths in Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines.
Classified as a developing country, China has no obligation under the UN climate process to support developing countries in their adaptation and resilience efforts. But it has stepped up anyway to launch initiatives and show support for the efforts of some of the most climate-vulnerable developing countries.
At the COP29 climate summit in 2024, China launched two major initiatives that reinforce this support.
The Action Plan on Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation (2025-2027) is designed to create a shared system to track and predict extreme weather, share disaster-preparedness knowledge and tools, and improve regional cooperation on early warnings.
Meanwhile, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexian announced that China would develop and implement a South-South cooperation flagship project. This will provide developing countries with meteorological observation equipment, early-warning systems and training.
China has shown leadership, but the growing severity of climate impacts demands more. As such, the country should explore the potential of creating joint-research projects, cross-border climate-risk assessments, and shared financing for resilient infrastructure.
In particular, China can strengthen the existing C40 Cities partnership – a global network of nearly 100 mayors committed to addressing climate change – to deepen technical and planning insights with participating cities like Houston, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. Such cities face many similar extreme weather challenges to the 13 Chinese cities in the network.
China can use C40 as inspiration for creating its own separate bilateral or “minilateral” collaborations at the subnational level between other interested cities to further enhance action on adaptation and resilience. These collaborations could take the form of best-practice sharing or extend to scaling pre-existing initiatives like early-warning systems and boosting local capacity.
China is already leveraging its strengths in technical innovation and enhancing local, state and international coordination. By fostering collaborative learning and insulating climate-resilience efforts from broader geopolitical volatility, the country can help lead a new phase of pragmatic, people-centred climate action that safeguards communities and livelihoods.
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.
