Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses a climate summit at UN headquarters on Wednesday. Xi’s speech was a signal that China will pick up the mantle of climate leadership.Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press
When Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed a United Nations environmental summit on Wednesday, the impacts of the continuing climate disaster were on full display in southern China, where more than a million people had to be evacuated ahead of Super Typhoon Ragasa, the strongest storm on Earth so far this year.
While typhoons are an annual occurrence in the South China Sea, they have been growing in frequency and intensity as a result of warming waters, and scientists warn that even cities built to be resilient to strong storms – such as Hong Kong – may not be prepared for the scale of future weather disasters.
Beyond the personal risk to those living in the path of super typhoons like Ragasa, the economic costs of shutting down a city like Hong Kong or neighbouring tech hub Shenzhen are staggering, and growing every year as intense weather events become more common. Other parts of China are are vulnerable to extreme heat and drought, including the capital Beijing, home to more than 22 million people.
It was a timely moment then for Mr. Xi to announce that China will cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 7 to 10 per cent in the next decade, action he said was vital to “preserve planet Earth – the place we call home.”
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While climate scientists want to see Beijing adopt a more ambitious goal, this is the first time China has set a detailed target for emissions reduction, and the country has a record of having “underpromised and overdelivered” when it comes to climate efforts, said Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at campaign group 350.org.
“China’s new climate target is both underwhelming and transformative,” Mr. Sieber said in a statement. “With its booming renewable sector, climate ambition is now squarely in the country’s self-interest.”
Indeed, Mr. Xi’s speech was a step toward picking up the mantle of climate leadership that many activists, scientists and politicians have long hoped Beijing would assume – one that China’s leaders have previously fiercely rebuffed.
China is the world's worst polluter, but the country argues that as a developing nation it should have more leeway when it comes to emissions reduction efforts.Thomas Peter/Reuters
China is the world’s worst polluter today, but the majority of emissions have historically come from the West, particularly the United States, the single biggest contributor to the climate disaster.
Action by Beijing is vital to any solution, but China’s leaders have maintained that as a developing country that did not play a major role in emissions in the past, China should have more leeway when it comes to mitigation efforts, particularly any that might slow economic growth.
(New Delhi makes a similar case, though in this instance, India’s rise may have come too late, with the country running out of time to get rich before it gets too hot.)
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Speaking to a state-run magazine last year, China’s climate envoy Liu Zhenmin accused Western countries of being disingenuous in flattering Beijing’s environmental goals, seeking to dump responsibility on China for solving a problem they largely caused themselves.
Unlike in the U.S. however, where climate-change denialism is rampant, particularly in President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Chinese officials are not blind to the risks posed by the climate disaster, not only to their citizens but also to the political stability the Communist Party prizes.
With Washington once again withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and Mr. Trump’s negotiators even seeking to undermine other countries’ climate goals, Beijing may be forced to play a greater role, if only because there is no other way to stave off the worst effects of global warming.
Notably, at another meeting in New York, Chinese Premier Li Qiang acknowledged that China was no longer a developing country and will not seek “new special and differential treatment” as such, something that has long been used as justification for low-balling climate goals.
Chinese companies have pledged at least US$227-billion for green manufacturing projects, according to a John Hopkins report.Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press
Perhaps most important however, is the fact that China dominates the green tech sector, and encouraging an international transformation away from fossil fuels will benefit the Chinese economy far more than any restrictions on carbon will at home.
Exports of Chinese solar panels, EVs and batteries have already cut global emissions by 1 per cent, according to research by Carbon Brief, and this could pale in comparison to the Chinese-led green transformation to come.
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A new report by the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins found that Chinese companies have pledged at least US$227-billion across green manufacturing projects, more in equivalent dollars than the U.S. spent on the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt much of post-Second World War Europe.
And unlike cheap solar panels and EVs, which have faced a backlash in some countries for undermining domestic competitors, China’s overseas investments, writes analyst David Fickling, are “building physical factories, ports and facilities that will generate jobs and investments for decades to come, cementing host countries’ commitment to clean technology.”
Speaking Wednesday, Mr. Xi said “global climate governance is entering a key stage.”
“The green and low-carbon transformation is the trend of the times,” he told other leaders. “Although individual countries are moving against the current, the international community should stay focused on the right direction.”