Jintao Xu

Jintao Xu is a Peking University Boya Distinguished Professor of Economics at the National School of Development, and director of the China Center for Environmental and Energy Economics (C2E3). He also holds appointments at Peking University’s Institute of Carbon Neutrality and the Global Institute of Health and Development.

He was previously at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Research Institute of Forest Economics and Chinese Academy of Forestry. He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, the World Bank, Resources for the Future (Gilbert White Fellow), and Stanford University. He is a fellow of Rights and Resources Initiative based in Washington DC, USA.

Jintao’s research spans the following areas: i) forest tenure reform and state forest reforms in China; ii) evaluation of China’s national ecological restoration programs; iii) China’s trade in timber and storable agricultural goods and its impacts on tropical deforestation; iv) economic policies in pollution control and climate changes.

Recently he led a large project evaluating China’s dual carbon strategy from economic perspective, a joint effort by eminent economists across multiple sub-fields of economics. This project led to the publication of a book: China’s Dual Carbon Goals: Economic Perspective (Peking University Press, 2025), for which he serves as the editor.

Jintao consults with national government and international organizations. He has led three third-party evaluation teams on polices launched by the central government on China’s forest sector reform. He has also served as consultant to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in the areas of ecosystem assessment, institutional analysis and economic policy instruments for programs implemented in East and Southeast Asia.

He received his PhD in Natural Resource Economics from Virginia Tech.

Research interests

• Socio-economic aspects of ecological restoration.
• Economic policy instruments.
• Land and forest tenure reform in developing countries.
• Household and firm level survey and analysis.