44 China The Economist February 13th 2021
Workingtogether,butinparallel
F
or thefirst decades of global wrangling about climate change,
China’s foot-dragging caused alarm. Its self-interested ap-
proach to climate action—once summarised by a Beijing-based
diplomat as seeking “maximum credit for the minimum effort”—
frustrated governments that were ready to enact costly measures.
Worse, China’s blame-shifting ways gave cover to politicians
clinging to climate denial and inaction in America and elsewhere.
Soon, the most disruptive force in global climate politics may
be China’s ambition. Its economy is being readied for a low-car-
bon world sooner than many expected. Its companies are under
orders to develop world-beating clean-energy technologies, in-
cluding by aggressively pushing foreign firms to share them. Chi-
na says it wants to re-engage with America on climate matters.
Optimists see signs in China of high-level pragmatism in the
return from semi-retirement of Xie Zhenhua. He is a well-con-
nected climate negotiator who brokered the burden-sharing
agreements between China and the Obama administration that
made possible the Paris climate accords in 2015. Mr Xie, China’s
new climate envoy, has known his American counterpart, John
Kerry, for years. Gloomier sorts worry about the distrust and dis-
dain shown by other Chinese officials and scholars who call Amer-
ica a jealous, declining power, bent on containing a rising China.
Talks on such subjects as climate cannot prosper when bilateral
relations are bad, said a foreign-ministry spokesman, after Mr
Kerry promised that he would not trade away American criticisms
of Chinese trade or human-rights abuses for climate-related con-
cessions. Chinese co-operation is not like “flowers that can bloom
in a greenhouse despite winter chill”, the spokesman sniffed.
China’s ambitions are disruptive because they are newly cred-
ible. They are credible, not because it has been converted to self-
less acts of sacrifice, but precisely the opposite. To Communist
Party leaders, greenery increasingly aligns with their economic
and political interests. China, a populous country that is cruelly
lacking in clean water and arable farmland, and which hates hav-
ing to rely so heavily on imported energy, has a selfish interest in
embracing what President Xi Jinping calls “ecological civilisa-
tion”. Though the Chinese public is not very focused on climate
change, citizens care deeply about clean air and water. They stagefrequent demonstrations against pollution. In the words of a Eu-
ropean diplomat, Mr Xi is convinced that “ecology is key to China’s
renaissance and is part of the social contract between the Commu-
nist Party and the people.” China also wants to enhance its global
reputation, the diplomat adds: “China cannot be Number One,
which is of course its aspiration, without being a climate leader.”
Last September, in a speech to the unGeneral Assembly, Mr Xi
unexpectedly committed his country to carbon neutrality by- That pledge to offset or capture all carbon dioxide emitted in
China would require most fossil fuels to vanish from an economy
that currently consumes more than half the coal burned world-
wide. In December Mr Xi tweaked existing targets for the year 2030
to make them a bit more ambitious and cover such areas as fossil-
fuel use, forest cover, and wind and solar installations. In a rare
public humiliation, environmental inspectors reporting to Chi-
na’s leaders recently accused officials at the National Energy Ad-
ministration of a “deviation in ideological understanding” for al-
lowing too much dirty coal to be burned.
The climate battle is not over. Fossil fuels still have powerful
defenders in China. Some provinces approved fleets of new coal-
fired power plants in 2020 while they still could. Chinese banks
and businesses still invest in coal-powered plants overseas, from
Pakistan to Africa. Still, signs may be glimpsed that China is plan-
ning for a different future. Research institutes close to Mr Xi’s in-
ner circle, notably at Tsinghua University in Beijing, have laid out
paths for the electricity sector to achieve net-zero emissions of
carbon dioxide by 2050. Indications of seriousness could appear
in the next five-year plan, to be unveiled in March. They could in-
clude an absolute cap on emissions, a step that China has so far re-
fused, or a promise to advance to 2025 the date when emissions
will peak. The current target for this will hardly be a stretch.
Previous high-level co-operation between China and America
or the European Union, as in Paris in 2015, involved joint announ-
cements of sweeping goals and targets, intended to prod other
countries into action. In these low-trust times, such moments
may prove hard to replicate. Instead, there is much talk in Beijing
of confidence-building exchanges between experts. Wang Xin,
who heads the research bureau of China’s central bank, cites
promising areas for co-operation with America and other coun-
tries. These include joint work on important technologies such as
carbon capture and storage, clean coal and hydrogen power, and
on developing green financial instruments to fund such efforts.
Climate co-operation is needed to tackle a threat to humanity, Mr
Wang says. “In the process, it is only natural to strengthen mutual
trust and improve relations.”
Asking China to show leadership cuts both ways
Obstacles loom. Other countries are wary of helping to strengthen
China’s industrial policies. In order to sell climate-related mea-
sures to voters, Mr Biden talks of creating millions of well-paid
jobs by making America an export champion in clean technolo-
gies. Li Shuo of Greenpeace, an environmental group, worries
about calls to action that are framed as a competition to beat China
in sectors like solar or wind power, where China “is so far ahead”.
Mr Li thinks that China and America may have to settle for “cli-
mate engagement” as they pursue common goals in parallel.
China is a latecomer to climate seriousness. Western powers,
especially in Europe, have long pushed it to do more. Now, at least
when it comes to clean technologies, China’s price for saving the
world may be asking to lead the world. Chaguan
China and America talk of reviving climate-change co-operation. It will not be easy