Successful diplomacy entails not just getting what you want, but also in convincing your opponents that what you want is also what they want as well. China's climate diplomacy was a partial success and also an indication of the difficulties that lie ahead in any Copenhagen-style global climate negotiation.A senior member of the Chinese negotiating team at Copenhagen has been shifted from his post, prompting speculation that he has been punished for the debacle of the climate talks.
He Yafei, who was at the forefront of China's blocking actions on the final fraught day of the summit, has been removed as vice foreign minister, according to a short summary of government appointments by the Xinhua news agenc
y.
The agency gave no explanation, but the Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao suggests He has been punished with a shift to a post at the United Nations for failing to smooth relations between China, the US and Europe, particularly as tempers flared in the last hours of the talks.
During the negotiations, He described his US counterpart as "lacking common sense", frustrated the US president, Barack Obama, at his inability to make decisions and astonished the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, by refusing to allow even rich countries to set a target to cut emissions by 2050.
In public, China has hailed the "significant and positive" outcome of the Copenhagen accord, which committed the world to keeping global warming below 2C.
Privately, however, officials are furious at the public relations disaster of the summit, which ended with Europe blaming China for sinking long-term goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of the problem was the vastly different expectations of the delegations. Britain and other European nations intended to bang heads together to achieve progress and to set ambitious targets during the two-week conference.
China, however, was desperate to avoid any goals that might limit its economic expansion. Having announced its first carbon target shortly before the conference, China's negotiators hoped the event would be a chance for the world to applaud the progress the country has made to improve efficiency and boost renewable energy.
The vastly different approaches led to several messy and fractious encounters, at which He Yafei was usually the fall guy.
05 January 2010
Copenhagen Fallout: China
It has been widely reported that China shares in the responsibility for the Copenhagen climate conference being largely perceived as a debacle. With the exception of a few U.S. environmentalists wearing rose-colored glasses China has been the only source of positive things to say about the Copenhagen outcome. China's positive statements might be read as an indication that they got what they wanted out of Copenhagen in terms of the negotiations. However, the Guardian today has an interesting report on the reassignment of the chief Chinese climate negotiator:
8 comments:
The Chinese are quite cleaver. Perhaps the reassignment was a promotion for a job well done.
Guardian assessment:
"China, however, was desperate to avoid any goals that might limit its economic expansion." Likely, He Yafei was told to "take one for the team" of 1.3 billion.
China has always impressed me with its patiently aggressive, consistently competent foreign policy.
The closing hours of Copenhagen represent a significant departure from this.
The Chinese, rather unambiguously, prevented the conference from adopting specific targets for developed nations, even though those targets were offered without any immediate quid pro quo.
It is impossible to blame the summit's failure on developed nations not doing enough, when the Chinese were unwilling to allow them to make commitments of any substance.
By the time Mexico rolls around, China will be "willing" to accept a document containing specific commitments by developed nations. But significant long term damage has been done to their international standing.
China is probably opposing carbon targets for other countries for fear of retaliatory carbon tariffs when domestic manufacturers complain about competing against countries without carbon restrictions.
UK, Australian and US leaders who are most vocal on Climate change have law degrees. In law, the judges could render a split decision but the decision of the majority is the LAW. If the current focus on carbon dioxide as the culprit for global warming is proven false in the future, the leaders in those countries could always claim theys were making decisions based on advice of the their experts--CRU, the Met Office for UK, CSIRO for Australia, Hansen and Mann for US, etc. On the otherhand, the Chinese leadership has a strong engineering and science background. The premier Wen is a geologist, the President is a hydraulic engineer and the chief negotiator has an engineering physics degree. Second, while everybody is labelling China as the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, China exports 40 per cent of its GDP. It is a hypocrasy for the developed countries to claim they have reduced their emissions when in fact their REAL emissions to the atmosphere has increased. The emissions from the goods and services they are using are just transferred to countries like China, India and Brazil. Third, China has an ageing population. Its service sector will have to expand rapidly to serve retirees. Considering its large foreign reserve and srinking labor force, it will just have to export the heavy industries and manufacturing industries abroad just like what the developed countries are doing today. Its energy intensity will just to drop rapidly when the labor force shift to the service sector and the heavy industries moves out. So China has to be careful on what it would ask the developed countries to do as it will have to face the same problem in the near future.
eo, you are either uninformed or disingenuous when you state that:
"while everybody is labelling China as the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, China exports 40 per cent of its GDP. It is a hypocrasy for the developed countries to claim they have reduced their emissions when in fact their REAL emissions to the atmosphere has increased. The emissions from the goods and services they are using are just transferred to countries like China, India and Brazil."
The Chinese have unambiguously declared that any attempt to impose taxes on imports based on the carbon used to produce them would be unacceptable to them. This includes carbon taxes whose only purpose would be to ensure that imported and domestically produced goods that emit equal carbon face an equal economic burden in the face of domestic carbon taxes.
If China wants western nations to stop "transferring" their emissions, then it has to drop its opposition to carbon based tariffs.
Until that happens, the Chinese bear full responsibility for their own emissions.
The failure of Copenhagen is good for people, and makes no difference at all tot he climate.
A successful Copenhagen, with quixotic efforts to manage the climate by way of CO2 taxation and rationing, would cause big problems in finance, food, transportation. And would have done nothing for the climate.
The best thing about Copenhagen is that many people who have not followed this closely got to see how AGW true beelievers behave and who they clap wildly for.
This helps weaken the political strength of the AGW community, and that is a good outcome
Now to work to make sure Mexico either does not happen or is even weaker in its outcome.
All that requires is for more daylight to be shone onto the inner workings of the AGW promotion industry.
Jason, In international negotiations "tariff" is a word negotiators tries to avoid and when it is placed on the table, the initial response is often negative. Tariff by customary practice is a used to protect domestic industries from more efficient competitors. While WTO allows imposition of tartiffs under certain circumstances most of the cases before its arbitration body is related to tarfiffs. When I was active in climate change negotiations one of my proposals was for a carbon added valuation of imports based on the best available technology. For example developing country A may generate 100 tons of CO2 per ton of product exported to developed country B but the best available technology is 80 tons of CO2 then this lower value is used. Each country will have to take its own business plan to reduce its emissions using the wide range techniques. There will ber no need to classify countries into Annex B and non annex B and moving countries to Annex B depending on its economic development. If a country opts for a carbon consumption tax, the tax will apply to both domestic and imported component unlike tariff which is directed to imports. I emphasized opts for carbon consumption tax because there are other market based instruments and other tools to available for a country to meet its commitments other than taxation. I am sorry for my ignorance.
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