Measuring Chinese climate uncertainty

We develop indices of Twitter-based Chinese Climate Uncertainty (TC-CU) and Climate Policy Uncertainty (TC-CPU) from 2010 to onward. Our indices spike with climate change-related presidential announcements, UN climate change conferences, climate change-related flood deaths, warning about melting glaciers in China's Qilian mountains, and rising climate concerns regarding bitcoin mining, among many others. We find that TC-CPU can predict future US climate uncertainty and attention measures while US measures do not predict Chinese climate change measures. Moreover, TC-CU (TC-CPU) negatively predicts equity returns of small (value) firms. Finally, we find a decline in CO2 emissions in response to shocks to TC-CU.