China and the Long Game on Climate

Who is afraid of China’s climate strategy? To some, the very question may appear unwarranted. Just in the past two years, China’s surprise commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060,  the announcement it will discontinue funding of new coal power plants internationally, and its introduction of new guidance on greening the Belt and Road Initiative, have all been a cause for optimism and cautious celebration. To top this off, China’s leading climate negotiator, Xie Zhenghua, announced at COP27, this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, that Beijing is close to releasing its plan on methane emissions reductions.

Such high-level declarations are indicative of Beijing’s determination to assume greater climate leadership responsibilities, willingness to work on climate commitments even in the absence of bilateral cooperation, and readiness to take a strong unilateral stand on climate, all without expecting concessions from others. The flurry of climate-related pronouncements also suggests a considerable central government capacity to consolidate the domestic institutional base and integrate climate-related decisions into a broader understanding of economic development.

Concerns about China’s strategy may also appear superfluous given the aforementioned announcements’ alignment with long-standing global frameworks and international agreements developed over the course of the past three decades. Let it be recalled, for example, that the basis for Beijing’s carbon and methane emissions pledges dates back not only to the 2015 Paris Agreement, but also to the Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement on an intent to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

At the time of the Kyoto meeting 25 years ago in 1997, China and the bloc of G-77 developing countries were not required to make any commitments on GHG emissions. Nevertheless, the protocol itself created the now taken-for-granted and internationally recognized framework for collective climate action. It was only at the Kyoto meeting that there was a global recognition among world governments on the need to acknowledge and commit to addressing the planetary harm of GHG emissions.

As Christina Figueres, a former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stated 10 years after the convention entered into force: “The Kyoto Protocol was a remarkable achievement in many ways. It not only underscored the scientific reality that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. But it also put in place pioneering concepts, flexible options, practical solutions and procedures for accountability that we often take for granted today.”

In a concerted effort to align itself with this new global understanding, the Chinese government at the time also initiated a gradual institutional reform so as to ensure the means for government coordination on climate. In addition, such reforms also coincided with the expansion of domestic institutions geared to address the growing need for environmental protection, waste management, and air pollution control. Back in 1998, for example, the State Council established the National Climate Change Response Coordination Group (NCCRCG) led by what was to become the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Furthermore, only two years after the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 2005, Beijing convened an executive meeting of the State Council to discuss the publication of China’s National Climate Change Program. The following year, in 2008, the Chinese government also established the Climate Change Department (CCD) as the first formal government agency dedicated to climate governance.

Essentially, the significance of introducing domestic-level climate policy is perhaps best understood in the fact that climate change targets began to be included as legally binding targets in China’s national development plans. As such, sustainability and environmental protection, along with GDP growth, became part of the performance evaluation for local governments.

Over the past two decades, there has also been a pronounced shift in official party ideology as a way of accommodating the necessary emphasis on climate. Mao Zedong was on a quest to conquer nature; Deng Xiaoping’s doctrine highlighted the primacy of the economy. By the time the Kyoto Protocol entered into force, the Chinese government had already planted the seeds of a new vision espousing the harmony between people and nature and introduced the now-ubiquitous concept of “ecological civilization.”

This ideological shift cannot be emphasized enough. Less than 20 years ago, there was a widespread perception that economic development formed the very foundation of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy. Correspondingly, Deng posed a question that remains relevant to this day: “If economic development continues at a low rate, living standards will remain low, so why do the people support us?”

Consider how far the government rhetoric has moved when, instead of staunch insistence on the primacy of economic development, China’s current leader, Xi jinping can instead declare: “Humanity coexists with nature, which means that any harm to nature will eventually come back to haunt humanity.”

Today, the Communist Party’s legitimacy is intricately integrated into the vision of a “shared future for mankind and nature” and China’s ability to “share the wisdom of ecological civilization” with the rest of the world.

The aftermath of the Kyoto meeting triggered a long-term vision on the need for institutional and ideological alignment in China. Additionally, the 1997 protocol’s introduction of market mechanisms to drive investments in climate change action directly exposed China to market-based instruments for emissions reduction. Initially, such instruments came in the form of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), allowing industrialized countries to support projects that decrease emissions in developing countries, whereby the latter receive funds and technology transfers for “sustainable development.” Over the first decade of CDM operations, China captured the lion share of projects, receiving both technology and financing for “clean development” of more than $81 million.

Building on knowledge and practices that were initially spurred through the Kyoto Protocol, China, in 2013, also launched pilot emissions trading schemes (ETS). In 2021, these were scaled into a full-fledged national ETS trading market. Fundamentally, the ETS scheme is seen as an additional tool to help the country reduce its overall carbon emissions and, according to some analysts, to shift the process of oversight and reporting away from the local government bureaucracy toward market forces.

Yet, as much as this unique story of long-term strategic institutional, political, and economic engagement with climate change might be a source of hope, there are also at least three reasons for discontent and apprehension. These include China’s geostrategic positioning on alternative energy technology, the excessive emphasis on GHG emissions, and the waning political commitment to equity, responsibility and climate justice. Remarkably, just as with Beijing’s initial engagement on climate in the aftermath of the 1997 Kyoto meeting, the origin of these challenges can be dated back to the language and agreements first initiated as part of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Geopolitics of Alternative Energy 

China’s early exposure to the aforementioned CDM projects as part of the Kyoto Protocol steered the government’s strategic orientation toward clean energy and steadfast support for the development of solar, wind, and hydropower. Targeted help in technology transfers and financing paved the initial steps to Chinese companies’ advancements in producing solar energy.

On top of this, the Chinese government itself has offered generous subsidies to develop the industry. Globally, this has meant at least two things: First, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has reported that over the past decade, the price of solar photovoltaic (PV) materials and devices, which convert sunlight into electricity, has fallen by 80 percent.

Second, while this dramatic price reduction has made solar energy more accessible, Chinese companies’ global dominance means the world needs to “almost completely rely on China” for the supply of solar panel manufacturing. According to the IEA report, China’s share in all the key manufacturing stages of solar panels exceeds 80 percent, and for key elements including polysilicon and wafers, this is set to rise to more than 95 percent in the coming years. The trouble, therefore, is China’s near monopoly on the path of secure and sustainable energy transition that the rest of the world needs to embark on.

And it is not only solar energy access which is a cause of worry; Chinese companies now also have large stakes in minerals such as lithium and cobalt, which are critical for the production of batteries for electric vehicles (EV). For example, just since 2018, Chinese companies have invested an estimated $16 billion in mining projects in South America’s “Lithium Triangle” – Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. China is now also heavily invested in nickel, another critical component for EV batteries, in Indonesia. Tellingly, such investments replicate Chinese companies’ strategic positioning in cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo more than a decade ago.

The geopolitical implications of such superior positioning can hardly be overemphasized. Today, China’s foresight and advancements in clean energy production position the country ahead of multiple energy-hungry competitors, who in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are suddenly aware of their unsustainable dependency on fossil fuels. China’s dominance of clean energy industries also means the U.S. government will face an uphill battle in its attempts at total decoupling. Whereas, for instance, Washington has been trying to weaken Chinese technological dominance, U.S. companies (including Tesla and Ford) are flocking to China and signing multi-year deals to source batteries from Chinese suppliers.

As one commentator remarked during a recent security conference, the United States and its allies appear to be facing a Gordian knot: Any push for energy transitions and less fossil fuels means more, not less, reliance on and cooperation with China. To put it in more colloquial terms, the West cannot have its cake and eat it too.

Climate Equity, Responsibility, and Justice

As previously mentioned, at the time of the Kyoto meeting in 1997, the Chinese government was not obliged to sign the Protocol and commit to emissions reductions. The arrangement was part of an agreement reached during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, honoring the developing counties’ contention that any attempts to comply with emissions reductions would disproportionately impede their economic prospects and reinforce historical injustices.

The language of this claim would become known as the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), which is rooted in the commonly-held perception that emissions are a proxy for economic development. As such, it was argued, developed countries’ proposition for emissions cuts was tantamount to calling for limits on economic growth in the developing world.

Along with India, Chinese representatives therefore remained steadfast in their insistence on upholding the CBDR principle five years later, during the meeting in Kyoto. This, in turn meant  the Kyoto Protocol would operate with two separate annexes, respectively placing countries in either developed or developing categories; emissions commitments were required only from the countries characterized as developed.

Throughout the decades that followed, both China and India assumed the mantle of leaders of the developing world and continued to champion the interests of the G-77. They have since insisted on the responsibilities of developed countries to take leadership on emissions reduction and to support developing countries’ capacity for adaptation and mitigation.

China and India’s vociferous stance often earned them a reputation in Western media circles as “dark forces, third world moralizers, laggards, and villains that stall progress on the global response to climate change.” Yet, it was also this united insistence on the need for responsibility and climate justice that, at least partially, motivated the 2009 pledge by developed countries to channel $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020, with the objective of helping them to adapt to climate change and to mitigate further rises in temperature.

Regrettably however, this pledge remains unfulfilled and most likely will never be met. Worse even, this year’s debates around “loss and damage” at the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh similarly suggest the most vulnerable nations can expect little support from the global community. It appears, just as with the COVID-19 pandemic, that everyone will be left to fend for themselves.

Certainly, beyond acting as a “third world moralizer,” it is not China’s duty to singularly force others to take responsibility or support processes of just transition. China’s own engagement with the developing world hardly suggests a consistent climate strategy: For example, the discontinuation of Chinese investments in new coal power plants abroad announced by Xi Jinping in 2021 came in the aftermath of numerous lawsuits and court rulings on the environmental and social harm of Chinese-funded coal power plant projects around the world. Let us not forget, either, that Chinese investment projects, especially under the Belt and Road Initiative, are estimated to overlap with the habitat range of at least 265 threatened species, 1,739 important bird areas or key biodiversity areas, and 46 biodiversity hotspots.

Indeed,  some may contend China is losing its self-appointed mantle as a climate champion of the Global South. This may be one way to read the most recent and well-publicized charge by the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, who declared on behalf of the coalition of small island nations that China and India must also pay for climate damage. Yet, to others, China’s leadership remains as viable: The COP27 milestone agreement on creating a loss and damage fund to pay poorer countries for harm caused by climate change was first put in motion by China and the G-77 during the negotiations.

Climate, GHG Emissions and the Future of the Planet

Twenty-five years ago, the Kyoto Protocol was celebrated for bringing forth a common understanding on the need to reduce GHG emissions. This in turn was further enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement and governments’ individual commitments to transition to “net zero” emissions. While agreements of this sort are critical, the reduction of global biological complexity into a linear expression of more or less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to limited understanding as well as reduced means of engagement and preservation of global ecological systems. Currently, the excessive focus on emissions reduction translates into little accountability on other environmentally devastating practices.

Cases that illustrate this lack of accountability include the intensified construction of global ports and the secretive deep-water fishing industry. Granted, in one high-profile case, local fishermen were awarded $18 million in compensation for the construction of a multi-billion port at Manda Bay in Kenya. Yet, even in this case there has been no compensation or discussion on the type of environmental impact the construction would have on the already fragile marine ecology.

Similarly, the global scramble for rare minerals, such as lithium, seems to entirely overlook the dirty reality of mineral extraction and the high levels of air, soil, and ground water pollution. Lithium production also requires substantive amounts of water – typically 21 million liters per day – an on-the ground reality that severely strains indigenous communities’ access to water.

While these, in addition to many other examples of daily environmental devastation, are not limited to China, they demonstrate that there are severe limitations to the country’s climate strategy, especially to its approach to protecting the increasingly vulnerable global ecosystems.

Who is afraid of China’s climate strategy? The answer depends on the starting point and what the strategy is compared against.

In many ways, China’s climate strategy and corresponding international commitments are the product of international frameworks, principles, and negotiations, dating back to Rio and Kyoto. Beijing’s foresight and geostrategic positioning on renewable energy also originates in the hallways of climate diplomacy, especially the Kyoto push for the use of market mechanisms to curb emissions. Similarly, China’s continued support and commitment to the Global South is strongly rooted in a long-standing developing world alliance that found its collective global voice at international climate negotiations.

The world, however, has moved a long way since Kyoto and so has the planet. Today, as never before, we are experiencing the direct effects of the rise of global temperatures: from melting icecaps and devastating floods to record levels of heat and reports that the sixth mass extension of species is already under way. We are collectively facing the “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” and may no longer be able to afford the luxury of a long-term climate strategy. To use U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ recent characterization, “humanity is on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” Indeed, for many, time has already run out.

If the world we are living in today is best characterized as a polycrisis, then a climate strategy, even if far-reaching and geopolitically superior, may not be up to the task of addressing our collective conundrum. This is not only because, in the words of Adam Tooze, in a polycrisis “the whole is worse than the sum of its parts,” but also because the tendency toward technological fixes (such as alternative energy innovations) or crisis-fighting (such as market mechanisms to cut emissions) does not address the underlying trends.

The Russian war on Ukraine alone exposed both the limits of our collective climate strategies and continued inability to break away from our current lifestyles and fossil fuels dependencies. Despite formidable net zero announcements backed by domestic institutions and  long-standing championship of alternative energy technologies, even China remains entirely dependent on coal and significantly ramped up production in the past year. For the Chinese government, energy security is a top priority, even if it might derail climate commitments in the short term.

As Li Zheng, a climate change and energy professor at Tsinghua University, stated recently: “We need an energy transition that’s high-quality and secure so it can be sustained… We don’t want to be like Europe and transform at the cost of energy security.”

The trouble with this strategy is that, presently, it is no different from any other government’s vision regarding its own security and plans for future development. Be that as it may, collectively, strategies such as these would only lead to an even more drastic transformation of the planet and further collapse of the already fragile and severely strained ecosystems.

China may hold geopolitical dominance on alternative energy sources, champion climate justice causes for the Global South, and even be on the cusp of formulating a vision of ecological civilization for the world. But if this is among the allegedly more consistent and forward-looking climate strategies out there, then there is even more need to brace ourselves for a very uncertain future. For China’s climate strategy has yet to become a polycrisis strategy.