poor nation making a transition that Europe and North America—and Japan—made decades ago, and it should not be denied the same opportunities and standards of living as the developed countries. In so doing, it distinguished between the “luxury emissions” of the developed world and the “survival emissions” of developing countries. Third, it pointed out that one reason that its energy use—and emissions—are going up so rapidly is that Europe and North America have in effect outsourced a significant part of their energy-intensive production to China, as their own economies continue to shift to services and consumption. As the former chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission expressed it, “A considerable amount of the increase in China’s energy consumption is a ‘substitute’ for energy consumption in other countries and regions.”3
Internationally, there would be no international climate change regime without China. But China’s own position was evolving. In 2006 the government released a National Assessment of Climate Change. It was the culmination of a four-year study, involving twenty government departments, that very much reflected the framework of the IPCC. It also represented a process of education for the country’s top leadership, which was briefed on the risks.
The day before World Environment Day, 2007, the government released its first “national strategy on climate change,” which warned that “the trend of climate change in China will further intensify in the future.” It reinforced the emphasis on conservation and energy efficiency, as well as on changing the fuel balance, protecting the ecosystem, restoring forests to 20 percent of total land, and developing world-class energy technologies. New natural gas resources and imported LNG would replace open coal burning in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities with natural gas networks.
China’s stance toward climate change shifted for both scientific and practical reasons. Droughts and floods highlighted the risks of climate change. Chinese scientists and the country’s leadership have become preoccupied with what global warming would do in the west, to the “water tower of Asia”—the glaciers and snow mass in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed China’s great rivers—and the impact on the country’s water supplies. In the east, rising sea levels would threaten the low-lying coastal regions that generate so much of the nation’s GDP and economic growth. Droughts, desertification, extreme weather, and instability in agricultural production—all these would be possible consequences.
But the domestic usefulness of the issue should not be underestimated. For climate change provides a very useful envelope for addressing the critical and all-too-immediate local and regional air and water pollution that affect so much of the country and that are an increasingly grave domestic political issue. It also becomes a very convenient tool for driving greater efficiency in the economy and, specifically, in energy use.
There are other practical aspects. China is deeply embedded in the global mesh of international trade and finance; indeed, it is that engagement that has been the foundation of its growth since 1979. Climate change is an issue that China encounters, it seems, at almost every economic conference. Threats of trade restriction from its major trading partners in retaliation for not reducing emissions cause considerable alarm. Vocal constituencies in the United States and other countries call for the imposition of border taxes or border adjustments on countries, preeminently China, that do not sign on to a specified international climate regime. Some of this sentiment is protectionism in disguise—somewhat off target since the bulk of China’s exports are low carbon in their intensity. But the Chinese leadership hardly wants to be the country accused of standing in the way of global cooperation on climate, let alone bear the potential costs. China concluded that its embrace of climate change policies would be a key element in its overall relations with the United States and Europe, and in mitigating political and trade tensions. President Hu Jintao summed it up in the autumn of 2009, with a resounding call at the United Nations for a “win-win” approach on climate change between developed and developing countries.4
INDIA: “THE CLIMATE AGNOSTIC”
India and China are often lumped together as though they share the same perspective. They do share a deep common interest in the Himalayan water tower that supplies their rivers. But India’s overall position is quite different. While it uses coal to produce most of its electricity and also burns a great deal of biomass, India produces only about 5 percent of the world’s CO2 compared with China’s 23 percent, which makes sense as India’s economy is only about one quarter the size of China’s.