An End to US-China Climate Change Diplomacy?

In December 2015, the 21st UN convention on climate change (formally known as the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21 for short) ended in proclaimed triumph in Paris, France. Negotiators from 195 countries reached agreement on what Reuters called the “world’s first comprehensive climate agreement,” as it would for the first time commit both developed and developing countries to limit emissions.

The deal was made possible, in large part, by bilateral agreements and commitments made by the United States and China, who often position themselves as the leaders of the developed and developing world, respectively. Their work together culminated in respective ratifications of the Paris agreement in September 2016, a move announced jointly by Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping in China on the sidelines of the G20 summit. Their ratifications paved the way for the agreement to officially enter force in November 2016.

As an advisor to the president of the Marshall Islands, one of the most outspoken countries on the issue of climate change, told Reuters, "With the two biggest emitters ready to lead, the transition to a low-emissions, climate-resilient global economy is now irreversible."

Less than two months after the ratification, however, the United States elected Donald Trump as its next president. Trump has publicly pledged to forgo efforts at emissions reductions, which he argues harm the U.S. economy. As part of his “Contract with the American voter,” a blueprint for his first 100 days in office, Trump promised to “lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves” (including oil and coal) and “cancel billions in payments to UN climate change programs.”

Unsurprisingly, the mood at COP22, held in Marrakech, Morocco from November 7-18, was decidedly less upbeat than COP21, including among China’s representatives.

China’s special representative on climate change issues, Xie Zhenhua, hailed the Paris agreement as “a milestone achievement in the multilateral process on climate change,” but warned that the work is not done yet. “All parties should speed up the delivery of their pre-2020 commitments in order to build mutual trust as the basis for the post-2020 implementation of the Agreement and enhanced actions," he said in his remarks at the Marrakech conference. He assured listeners that China would hold to its commitments – the unspoken question was whether the United States, under Trump, would do the same.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin tried to remain upbeat. “We shall have to wait and see what position [the United States] will take, but we... expect that they will take a right and smart decision to live up to the world's expectations,” he told reporters at COP22.

There’s a certain irony to the current situation. For much of the recent past, China was a noticeable hold-out on climate change issues. Beijing’s general stance was that the West had created the problem, and so the West must solve it – China was certainly not going to forgo its continued development to address climate change. Chinese officials spoke of a “carbon debt” owed to them by the developed world, and insisted that poverty eradication must be considered alongside emissions reductions (which, in practice, translated to developing countries bearing no responsibilities for reducing emissions).

Trump took things to an extreme when he famously tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” But his general sentiment – that joining efforts to mitigate climate change would hamstring U.S. industry, giving China an unfair advantage – is not uncommon among Republicans.

In fact, former U.S. President George W. Bush cited China’s attitude as a reason for his opposition to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. He argued that developing countries, including China as well as India, must also shoulder commitments to emissions reductions in order for the United States to do the same. “The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China,” he said in a June 2001 speech explaining his position. “Yet China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto protocol.”

So the United States was not willing to act on climate change until China did – and vice versa. The result, for over a decade, was stalemate.

Bush’s successor, current President Barack Obama, also experienced this problem at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference, which was supposed to end with the sort of far-reaching climate deal sealed six years later in Paris. Despite Obama’s personal emphasis on the issue in discussions with China, Beijing refused to budge on its core position: no legally-binding emissions reductions should be expected from the developing world. The attempt at a Copenhagen deal fell apart largely because the United States and China could not bridge that gap.

So what changed between 2009 and 2016? China’s domestic awareness of environmental issues, starting with the hazardous smog choking cities like Beijing, skyrocketed. The change was already underway after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when extreme measures to dissipate the chronic air pollution showed residents what their city could look like with a blue sky. With China’s urbanites more and more aware of and concerned about environmental degradation – and its deadly health consequences – China’s government moved to get out in front of the issue. Beijing began to ramp up its commitment to renewable and clean energy; today, it is the world’s largest investor in those technologies (although its electric grid remains heavily reliant on coal).

With China’s people providing the domestic impetus for change, Beijing found its new priorities were far more amenable to an international climate change deal. China could now simultaneously please its people, by granting them cleaner air, water, and soil, and cement its role as a leader on an issue of global import – the sort of status-booster Beijing cherishes. And so U.S.-China climate diplomacy revved into high gear ahead of the Paris conference. They sealed a much-touted bilateral agreement on climate change mitigation in 2014, announced during Obama’s visit to Beijing. In the deal, the two sides not only unveiled new commitments to emissions reductions, but “resolved to work closely together over the next year to address major impediments to reaching a successful global climate agreement in Paris.” Their public commitment to a Paris deal all but ensured success in 2015.

Now, it seems the tables have turned, and it will be China’s turn to try and cajole a reluctant United States to take part in efforts to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. The one bright spot is that China, unlike Washington in the Bush era, seems committed to a green path, regardless of what happens in the United States. As Barbara Finamore and Alvin Lin of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China program pointed out in a passionate rebuttal to Trump’s climate change policies, “China is moving to cut its CO2 emissions much faster than anyone expected, and is now on a path to achieving its Paris climate commitments, including peaking its CO2 emissions, well before its 2030 goal… China’s leadership in renewable energy technology, revenue, and jobs will only accelerate if the U.S. were to pull back on its climate commitments.”

Or, as Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, put it: “Whatever other countries may do or may not do, China will continue to make genuine efforts to respond to climate change to seek to realize green and sustainable development.”

The golden age for U.S.-China climate change diplomacy is over, after all too brief a time. Now the world will see whether China can find the strength to live up to its commitments – even if its major economic competitor does not.