Sustainability in China: Bridging global knowledge with local action

Abstract

As the biggest emerging and developing country, and the second largest economy on the planet, China's road to sustainability has attracted global attention; therefore, we need to have a deeper understanding to address this issue at very different levels. This editorial mainly reviews the contributions of the published papers in the Special Issue of "Sustainability in China: Bridging Global Knowledge with Local Action", the main findings in this special edition suggest that the concept of sustainability is more comprehensive and complex, and the transformation process from scientific knowledge to local action still has a long way to go, not only in China, but also in many developing countries. More research on the fundamental and innovative processes of sustainable transformations should be conducted. China needs to make more efforts to strengthen its road to sustainability, by merging all relevant types of knowledge, both within and outside science, as well as locally and globally.