Chinas remarkable economic development has been achieved at the cost of its environment.Scholarly attention on international norm diffusion and policy learning asserts that international influence could make a positive impact on Chinas environmental politics.However, the policy process in China still remains the campaign style which dates back to Moos era.The in-depth case study of two inland counties in Shaanxi province provides empirical ground which partially challenges the so-called international influence approach.County B and W which both involved in international forestry cooperation with the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (hereafter, KFW) both learned from their partner in implementing the Grain for Green project, but with different level of learning and institutional changes consequently.Rather than the structure of international influence, the findings based on these two counties indicate another important factor which definitely affects policy learning and changes made by local bureaucrats, namely local learning agents.The locality which exist a strong local learning agent is more likely to induce learning and substantive institutional changes.The finding also implies the difficulty in spreading new norms and knowledge from international actors to the Chinese government.It shows that it cannot take it for granted that international influence can enhance domestic governance.