Against the backdrop of climate change and global warming, China’s regional climate has also experienced obvious changes over the past century, underpinned by the overall rising temperatures and coast lines, incremental extreme weathers, and melting ice caps etc. As China’s urban population surpassed rural population in 2011, cities have become the main spatiotemporal platforms for social, economic and political exchanges in China, and therefore subject to climate change and its impacts. An array of top-down policy frameworks had been put forward by the central government to address climate change vulnerabilities of Chinese cities as guidelines, yet some key issues such as how exactly climate change impact urban infrastructure at regional scales, have not been fully elaborated in both academic and policy-making sphere.

In this study, we first systematically comb through the existing literature on how climate change impact urban infrastructure both within and outside China for a holiest understanding; then we zoomed in the Northeast part of China and chose the provincial capital city of Shenyang as case study; next, we conducted in-depth interviews and questionnaires for the key decision-makers and stakeholders of urban planning and policy-making organizations of Shenyang municipality to determine how they view the climate change impacts to the city and how policy tools have been developed as coping strategies as well as their prospects and challenges; last, we summarized three sets of policy tools, namely, “transformation strategies”, “defense strategies” and “adaptation strategies” as policy-making recommendations for developing climate resilient and climate –coping cities in China. The outcomes of this study, would shed some more lights in the on-going debates and discussions for urban planners, policy-makers and stakeholders.