Can China Lead the Fight on Climate Change?

As soon as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, a narrative surfaced among the international community: China was to become the “leader” in the global fight against climate change. The word “leader” brings to mind the image of a virtuous hero. One may be quick to dismiss China’s suitability for the role, given its less-than-heroic environmental record. Its economic reforms since the late 1970s may have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, yet the speed and scale of environmental destruction has been simultaneously unparalleled.

Much of China’s polluting production has roots abroad, as its cheap labor, land, and lax regulations have attracted bounteous foreign investment. But plenty of China’s pollution is homegrown, coughed out by the coal-fired power plants that fuel the nation’s economic engine, the industries and infrastructure projects that keep the masses working, and the Toyotas and Buicks prized by the mushrooming middle class. Since 2007, China has surpassed the United States as the leading greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. And the late-coming neoliberal behemoth is currently offshoring emissions abroad through its controversial Belt and Road Initiative.

What global leadership could there be to speak of when China’s own environmental track record has been subpar?

As the great mythologist Joseph Campbell has elucidated, a hero is not a selfless martyr, and the hero’s journey is not a morality play. The passage into heroism often starts from a place of grudging reluctance, when a decidedly unheroic figure is thrust into a mighty responsibility they did not seek. This is the familiar story of Hamlet, Frodo, Jon Snow, Katniss Everdeen, and Han Solo. Will it be the story of China in the fight against climate change? Will it ultimately be the story of all the villains of manmade global warming – that is, humanity itself?

The four years since Paris mark the four warmest years in recorded history. The world’s most vulnerable are already being consumed by roaring hurricanes, oppressive heatwaves, burning forests, and creeping sea levels. More than a minority in the scientific community believes that the fight to meet the Paris commitments has already been lost. But for those who still hold onto the possibility of redemption, Paris or not, perhaps a new perspective on leadership is in order.

From this perspective, leadership is not anointed by divine intervention, but ordained by practical necessity. Leadership that confers not status, but responsibility; leadership that is fulfilled not through symbolic rhetoric, but substantive action. This is what the international community is looking for when talking about Chinese leadership following the U.S. withdrawal from Paris. It is a plea for action rather than a heroic accolade. For those who have not yet given up on what China can do (and must do) for the planet, it is helpful to examine both its actions and inactions, where the rhetoric of its climate and environmental leadership meets reality, and where reality falls short of rhetoric.

Like Han Solo, China has been thrust into leading a fight it was not ready for. Can it lead? If so, how?

Changing National Identity

After four decades of breakneck economic growth, China still insists that it is a developing country, albeit “the largest developing country in the world.” This is mostly true. Despite being the world’s second largest economy, China’s GDP per capita ranks 76th in the world, having only recently overtaken Cuba, according to World Bank figures. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, China’s average living standard is about a quarter of the United States’ and the same as Azerbaijan’s. Much of its countryside is still poverty-stricken and yearning for material betterment. Its per capita CO2 emissions are still only half those of the United States, although the gap is shrinking.

There are strategic reasons for China to hold on to its developing country identity. Developing country status at the World Trade Organization (WTO) translates into “special and differential treatment” by the organization, although in practice China’s WTO commitments have been comparable to developed countries. Furthermore, developing status means lower expectations for a country’s labor and environmental practices. When pressed on China’s pollution problems, any decently educated Chinese citizen is adroit at calling out the hypocrisy of the West: It took Europe 200 years to industrialize, pollute, and clean up, why should we expect China to take only 20?

There was a time when Chinese delegates laid low and avoided leading discussions in climate negotiations. According to a former member of the U.K. government, a Chinese climate negotiator once said that “the West talked about leadership as if everyone wanted it.” Rather, China had no ambition for leadership; they wanted to be neither dragged along nor the one doing the dragging, but rather somewhere in the middle.

Yet this passive stance began to shift when Xi Jinping came to office in 2012. In what became known as his guiding ideology, the “China Dream,” Xi started speaking of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” In less abstract terms, the basic objectives of the Xi administration have been in line with its two predecessors: They want to double China’s per capita income between 2010 and 2021 (to reach “moderate prosperity”), and to complete a less-clearly-defined “comprehensive modernization” by 2049. Disputes over the accuracy of its GDP figures notwithstanding, China’s 2021 target of “moderate prosperity” might have already been reached, and the 2049 “comprehensive modernization” target was accelerated by 15 years during the 19th Party Congress in 2017.

But Xi’s China Dream is not only about economic modernization, and this is where his tone begins to deviate from his two predecessors. In foreign relations, Xi is pursuing what Zheng Wang at Seton Hall University calls “alternative diplomacy.” Instead of passively obeying the rules set by American-led international institutions, China has set out to forge its own path through institution building and international investment. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) now acts as a powerful alternative to the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and IMF. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has reached 126 countries through modern-day “silk roads,” including a “maritime silk road” that runs through the South China Sea, the South Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean, as well as an “ice silk road” jointly developed with Russia.

If hard power is all that China is after, we might as well sit back and watch the Thucydides Trap spring into action. Yet the China Dream, as it is told, is not entirely without a softer side. Perhaps most intriguing is Xi’s repeated reference to the notion of the “common destiny of mankind,” also translated as “shared future for mankind.” At its core, this is a liberal theory of international cooperation that builds on the stated first principle that “human beings have only one Earth.” This theory maintains that China should “persist on a path of peaceful development,” and calls on the international community to “work together to build a community with a shared future for mankind, to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.” At a minimum, using “mankind” as the frame of rhetorical reference indicates that the cognitive horizon of Chinese leaders has greatly expanded. While Mao wanted to unite the “third world” at the height of the Cold War, Xi’s vision is more global.

This lofty narrative about the future of humanity is reflected, perhaps more than anywhere else, in Xi’s rhetoric on environmental protection and climate change. In his inaugural speech as general party secretary, Xi promised China’s people a “beautiful environment.” Repeatedly he iterated what became known as the “Two Mountains Theory” of sustainable development. This theory, which was first articulated in 2005 when Xi was the party secretary of Zhejiang province, states that “green mountains and clear water are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver.” On the tradeoff between economic development and environmental protection, Xi maintains that “when we cannot have it both ways, we need to know what to give up and how to choose.” His penchant for “ecological civilization” is consistently uttered at home and abroad. In a visit to the White House in September 2015, Xi and then-U.S. President Barack Obama issued a joint statement on climate change, including China’s pledge to roll out a national carbon emissions trading market and contribute $3.1 billion to help developing countries with climate adaptation.

When Trump initiated the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, some feared that the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter would be the next to abandon ship. Yet so far there is no such sign. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledged at the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019 that the withdrawal of the U.S. form Paris would not impede the “collective will of the international community.” Ma Jun, a prominent Chinese environmentalist and policy advocate, affirmed China’s intention to “Truly Lead the Fight Against Climate Change” in the September 2019 issue of Time magazine, writing alongside names like Jane Goodall and Al Gore.

Sometimes a Windmill, Other Times a Wall

Underneath any smooth rhetoric lies a choppy reality. The plain boring fact is that Chinese environmental practice in recent years has been a mixed bag of positives and negatives, of ups and downs, of nothing particularly heroic and nothing completely irredeemable. As former U.S. Vice President Al Gore simply put it: “China’s role is complicated.” It has exceeded expectations on some issues and disappointed on others. When the winds of change blow, sometimes China builds a windmill; other times it erects a wall.

The discrepancy between rhetoric and practice, where it exists, and the dizzying inconsistency (if not contradiction) in China’s environmental practices can be explained by three interrelated tradeoffs the Chinese Community Party (CCP) faces: 1) the institutional tradeoff between national and subnational interests; 2) the political tradeoff between governance priorities and societal demands (and between different societal demands); and 3) the ultimate, existential tradeoff between environmental sustainability and economic needs. In these simultaneous balancing acts, the country experiments and errs, it tightens and loosens, it leaps forward and lurches back.

The first tradeoff – between national and subnational interests – offers an institutional explanation for weak and uneven implementation of environmental policies at the local level. During the early reform era, localities were given a large amount of latitude to experiment and improvise. This decentralization of decision-making – both by default and by design – is partly why China managed to grow so rapidly and adapt so aptly. What was great for the economy was bad for the environment, however, as local officials turned a blind eye to the detrimental environmental outcomes so meticulously documented by existing studies.

Of course, it would be foolish to place blame entirely on local officials, who are, after all, responsible for the multi-tasking of economic development, environmental protection, generating employment, and maintaining social stability. When environmental protection confers few economic or political benefits, promoting industry was the best bet for local officials regardless of whether their priority was to get rich, be promoted, provide employment, or generate revenue. For instance, in areas where government revenue was heavily reliant on the coal mining industry, officials would ignore central directives to shut down mines and even allow the operation of unlicensed mines.

This began to change in 2017, when the National Development and Reform Council (a powerful economic bureaucracy) announced that environmental protection would carry more weight than economic development in the central government’s assessment of local officials – an absolutely unprecedented move in the People’s Republic of China. When the idea of “Green GDP” had first been raised in 2006, it met so much local resistance that it was immediately put on hold. This time it prevailed, and not only on paper. In the past few years the central government has repeatedly intervened to cancel new coal power plants approved by local officials.

As China ramps up pollution control through strengthening environmental laws and reforming its bureaucracy, it still needs to solve the problem of complex and contradictory public demands. On one hand, there is a growing urban middle class demanding cleaner air; on the other hand, there is a still-large rural population in need of livelihoods. On top of these conflicting demands, there is the ongoing conversion of population and land from rural to urban, which in turn changes the structure of demand while putting further stress on the environment.

Nothing captures the tradeoff between governance priorities and societal demands more vividly and painfully than the “Coal-to-Gas” policy in the winter of 2017. Ever since Beijing’s “airpocalypse” made it into the headlines of the New York Times in January 2013, its air quality has been diligently monitored by the international media and Chinese citizens. In October 2017, in an effort to curb coal consumption and improve winter air quality, the central government ordered the replacement of coal-fired boilers with natural gas in 28 northern Chinese cities, covering 300 million households and myriad enterprises. Given the new terms of performance evaluation, local officials responded fervidly to this policy initiative, even overshooting the designated targets of coal elimination in some areas.

Yet what looked like a success story of pollution control and carbon reduction quickly turned awry. As winter descended in November, gas prices skyrocketed and became unaffordable for common folk. Increased demand also led to a nationwide gas shortage (China imports most of its oil and almost half of its natural gas). In some villages, the demolition of coal boilers was not followed up with the timely installation of gas infrastructure. Stories of freezing schoolchildren swarmed social media, generating widespread public outcry. In December 2017, a great policy reversal lifted the ban on coal burning and ordered localities to cease implementation of the coal-to-gas policy. In less than two months, the pendulum swung back, as the dream of clean air was met with the harsh reality of basic livelihood.

Ultimately, China has arrived at the veranda of the hard, existential tradeoff between environmental sustainability and economic needs. The Coal-to-Gas story shows that this tradeoff is not some utility function maximized at the individual level. Rather, more excruciating is the societal-level tradeoff between the preferences – if you will – of different groups. When the figure of GDP growth drops from 6.2 percent to 6 percent, some breathe cleaner air, others lose their entire livelihoods. The difficulty of balancing all the utterly diverse interests that lie beneath the country’s authoritarian veneer explains the whirlwind ride of China’s economic and environmental transformation in recent years.

The Silver Lining on the Coast

When protecting the environment does not impose a harsh economic cost, China can be surprisingly effective, given the CCP’s strong mobilization capacity. The increasing attention paid to bio-conservation exemplifies how China can pursue environmental sustainability with gusto when the economic downsides are not too steep. With more and more species being added to the protected list, enforcement of anti-poaching has become definitively stronger. A conservationist in Beijing disclosed that the forestry police in the capital now responds immediately to reports of violations, whereas a few years ago they would ignore most reports.

In 2017, China nominated 14 sites along the coast of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Bay for consideration to become World Heritage sites, effectively securing the protection of these sites that act as key carbon capturers and buffers against rising sea levels. The intertidal wetlands of China’s Yellow Sea coast also serve as vital refueling stations for millions of migratory waterbirds that pass through the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), including multiple critically endangered species. Precipitous habitat loss prompted an international effort to conserve the EAAF led by NGOs, activists, scientists, think tanks, as well as the Chinese and South Korean governments. In 2018, China’s State Oceanic Administration banned further commercial land reclamation along the coast. In July 2019, the United Nations added Taozini and Yancheng to its World Heritage sites. As Birding Beijing reports: “[T]he emotions of shorebird researchers and conservationists have swung from depression and despair to hope and celebration.”

China is also currently developing a national park system that is explicitly modeled on the U.S. National Park Service (with advice from their American counterparts). While China already has protected parks, they are poorly managed, with conservation often being overtaken by local commercial interests. The new national park system will harbor existing protected parks under its wing and has identified additional important zones for protection. With centralized and streamlined management, these lands and forests will be strictly off limits to commercial and industrial development.

The Chimera of Climate Action

When emissions mitigation is beneficial to the economy, China is capable of marshaling its enormous entrepreneurial energy, and has already dove headfirst into sectors of the future, such as low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs) and renewable energy. The production of LCETs generates emissions of its own, and their consumption is not without worrisome downstream problems (retired batteries, solar panels, and nuclear rods are all hazardous). This has led some to the bleak (albeit logical) conclusion that “green growth” is a myth. However, LCETs and renewables are by far our best bet at decarbonization next to the raw method of cutting emissions, which, again, means one less pair of jeans for some, and suffering in the cold for others.

China is now the world’s largest investor in the research, development, and deployment of LCETs and renewables. It is the world’s largest producer of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries. China is also a major consumer of these technologies, with its countryside festooned with solar panels, its cities over-run by electric cars, and its frontiers bedecked with wind turbines. Support for LCETs and renewables is strong both in government and in society. Michaël Aklin and Johannes Urpelainen in their comparative study of renewable energy development find that there is less opposition to renewables in China (and India) than in industrialized countries.

But the story does not end there.

As China itself gets greener, its multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is raising serious concerns abroad. While some might consider the BRI an economic win-win for China and the host countries, its environmental impact will be enormous. The BRI’s substantial investment in fossil fuel projects around the world will not only spawn and sputter new emissions but might lock host countries into coal dependency. Many of the top destinations for Chinese fossil fuel investment in the Global South enjoy abundant wind and sun, but investing in coal plants threatens to derail them from achieving their renewable potential. While Chinese overseas investment in renewables is also significant, most of it goes to destinations outside of the BRI.

BRI’s transportation infrastructure projects – rails, roads, ports – are bound to exert negative impact on local ecosystems, threatening the survival of hundreds of species, including the critically endangered Saiga antelopes of the Eurasian steppes. Moreover, the human utilization of these new transportation networks will, in and of itself, constitute an important source of carbon emissions. Based on projections made by a recent study conducted by Tsinghua University, ClimateWorks Foundation, and Vivid Economics, if all projects along the BRI proceed in business-as-usual mode, it could more than double the carbon emissions in host countries by 2050, and drive global warming well pass the 2 degree scenario goal set by the Paris Agreement.

How should we understand and assess this chimera of China’s environmental practices today? It is worth mentioning that the labyrinthine beast that is the BRI is primarily carried out by subnational actors. The conflict of interest between national and subnational actors may be heightened when subnational actors are abroad, and when local-international interests are brought into the fold. Thus the same kinds of tradeoffs seen in China’s own environmental transformation will likely be replicated abroad.

Yet, if the overall picture we draw is that domestic practices are becoming better and better, without the same improvements taking place internationally, then China is simply reliving the story of Western powers that offshored their worst practices overseas. This conundrum is not beyond the ken of Chinese leaders. Just in this year’s keynote at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Xi reiterated that “the pursuit of the Belt and Road Initiative is not meant to reinvent the wheel,” and that “we should pursue the new vision of green development … that is green, low-carbon, circular, and sustainable.”

This proposition is yet to be tested. If we take the notion of “community with a shared future for mankind” seriously, it means that “ecological civilization” refers not only to Chinese civilization but to all of human civilization. It means China should weigh the human and environmental costs along the BRI as carefully as it does at home. It means the silk roads of the 21st century should be as clean as they are prosperous. After all, what good is securing habitat for migratory birds on China’s own coast if their journey is cut short later on the other side of the continent?

Only Path Forward

Paris was but a moderate first step, yet it carried the symbolic power of global solidarity, joined by the world’s two largest economies and carbon emitters. Four years after Paris, one of the co-pilots has stormed out of the cockpit. Decades-old U.S.-China rapprochement is dramatically cooling as the planet furiously warms.

In 2007, when the American Embassy in Beijing began tweeting out hourly air pollution data, China accused the United States of meddling in its domestic affairs. A few years later, Beijing took it upon itself to publish real-time updates on air quality data in all major cities. Although many have disputed data quality at the subnational level, it is also undeniable that the ball is moving in the right direction. A recent study published in PNAS finds significant nationwide decline in air pollution between 2013 and 2017, and associated abatement of premature deaths by 370 thousand individuals.

However, the ongoing trade war with the United States is putting China’s domestic economy through a hard test. It has become patently clear that China’s transition into a low-carbon, high-tech, service economy will be as arduous as it is necessary. Brawling U.S.-China relations as well as uproars in the Middle East means that China will be rethinking its energy security; and given its reliance on oil and gas imports, it might turn back to coal-power as the safest bet. After five years of steady decline in coal consumption, carbon emissions rebounded in 2018 as numerous new coal plants came under construction or into operation. Observers have also noticed a softening of the harsh tone on coal by top leaders as China begins to draft its next Five Year Plan (2021-2025).

China is at a crossroads, and its decisions will affect not only its own billion-plus people but billions more. How Beijing uses its enormous planning power, where it injects its fiscal stimulus, and how it balances domestic interests and international concerns are difficult as well as delicate questions. Difficult because self-interest and the common good are always hard to reconcile; delicate because jobs and livelihoods are at stake when China meets its global commitments. But this does not make leadership unthinkable. Campbell taught us that a hero’s journey may start from a place of self-interest, but through their adventure along “the road of trials,” they discover the forces within and give their service to the greater good. In this case, that greater good may well be no less great than the “common destiny of mankind.”

What does the future hold for China? Will China own up to the responsibilities thrust upon it, like Han Solo? Will it lead the fleet of efforts into a renewable future? As John Helveston and Jonas Nahm have recently argued in Science magazine, there is simply no time left to pass the hot globe around: There is no option left but to collaborate with China on the issue of climate change.

And as for China, it has to lead, like it or not.