was reached through negotiations: domestic mitigation actions supported by
developed countries are internationally measured, reported and verified, while
voluntary mitigation actions based on a country’s own resources are domestically
measured, reported and verified by the developing countries and are subject to
international consultation and analysis. Both sides had disagreements concerning
the rules for the scope of application of“measureable, reportable and verifiable”,
which reflected the attempt of the EU and the USA to use a soft performance review
system to reinforce the emission reduction obligations of large developing countries
and an active safeguarding of the sovereignty of the developing countries.
Fierce clashes on many issues in international climate agreement negotiations are
also manifested in competition involving methodology or method standards;
besides the above-mentioned methods for calculating the assignment of responsi-
bility for emission reduction, other methods such as carbon sink calculation and the
comparison method, etc. are also of great significance. In addition, industrial
emission reductions, such as the current most prominent emission reduction
arrangements for aviation and maritime industries, are the important fronts for
China-EU climate rule competition outside the Convention’s system.
Low-carbon standard is another important area which epitomizes the rule
competition. The product standard, the industrial standard, the method standard, etc.
may exert a great impact on the development of a low-carbon economy. China’s
low-carbon industry is still at the initial stage, and many areas have no standards of
their own or are governed by the standards of other areas. The EU has played a
leading role in rules concerning the low-carbon ecological standard, the global
low-carbon label, etc. With the increasing competitiveness of China’s low-carbon
industry, Chinese standards will be more competitive with the EU’s standards.
9.3 China-EU Cooperation in Climate Negotiation Politics
The main contradiction in global climate politics is the north-south contradiction
between developed countries and developing countries. The core of the contra-
diction lies in fairness and development issues. There were also some disagree-
ments within the coalition of developed countries, among which the most striking
case is that the EU and the USA held different stands on quantified emission
reduction obligations andflexible mechanisms. The USA insisted that the non-
participation of developing countries in emission reduction would make all emis-
sion reduction efforts fruitless and hoped to use aflexible mechanism to replace
actual emission reduction, suggesting that the USA was unwilling to subject eco-
nomic growth to climate governance. On the contrary, the EU believed that costs
for first reducing emissions were acceptable and the global climate system
arrangement offered opportunities for the EU to address the energy security threat,
occupy a commanding position for the future development of the low-carbon
industry and transform to a low-carbon economy. Since the Copenhagen Climate
Conference, interests in groups of developing countries have become increasingly
176 F. Cong