China makes US scapegoat of Durban climate conference

By Andreas Landwehr Dec 9, 2011, 15:49 GMT

Beijing - China accused the United States of being the single most important obstacle to resolving the world's climate problems, blaming the lack of progress at the climate talks in South Africa on US intransigence.

By contrast, Chinese state media presented China's attitude as 'serious and constructive.' They reported that negotiator Xie Zhenhua had for the first time in Durban declared China's willingness to talk about binding targets for climate protection from 2020 onwards, describing this as an attempt to 'break the ice.'

The US had offered only a 'cold shower' in response, the reports said. 'Their lack of gratitude and arrogance could suffocate vanishing hopes of making real progress in Durban,' the official Xinhua news agency said in an editorial Friday.

Nevertheless, confusion reigned among delegates in the South African city on the precise nature of the Chinese position as the conference drew to a close while the Chinese made intelligent use of tactics and public relations to play the ball straight back into the US court.

Criticism was voiced at the 'unendurable ping-pong game' being played by the world's two largest producers of greenhouse gases as the talks extended beyond their original end date of Friday into Saturday. The London-based Economist magazine referred to 'a gust of Chinese hot air,' but international environmental groups grabbed their chance to increase the pressure on the US.

China's apparent offer was linked to a series of conditions that received little mention in the reports with the chief Chinese negotiator setting five conditions that are by no means new and also highly intricate as he declared China's willingness to talk about a legally binding agreement at some point in the future.

For example, industrialized countries, with the US at the forefront, have to commit themselves to a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gases, a treaty that expires next year, he said. But the Chinese well know that only a minority of nations would be prepared to agree to another treaty and that the US, while it signed the original 1997 Kyoto Protocol, has never ratified it.

China also demanded a check on to what extent the current Kyoto agreement has been adhered to, to clarify, so it says, the responsibilities and goals for the next round of talks, knowing full well that the US would emerge as the worst offender.

China also wants a rapid establishment of a climate fund whose aim would be to transfer technology from the industrialized world to developing countries while offering huge financial support to the tune of 'hundreds of billions of dollars.'

China was prepared to shoulder legally binding obligations commensurate with its economic development and its capabilities on the basis of the principle of common, although differing, responsibility, Xie said.

Delegates interpreted his statement as meaning little more than the world's biggest polluter would continue to give priority to economic growth over combating global warming, a position little different to that of the US.

But China was able to show off the massive expansion of its renewable energy resources, doubling its wind and solar energy every year for six years in a row.

China makes more solar panels than any other country although most are exported. No other country is investing as much in renewable energy resources, a recent UN report noted.

China has set itself the target of reducing its carbon dioxide emissions for every yuan earned by 17 per cent by 2015, which sounds like a lot, although the target is undermined by the fact that China's economy is growing fast.

In absolute terms, emissions continue to rise, by as much as 10 per cent last year, and since 2003, emissions have doubled. A study by the European Union highlighted that China's emissions on a per=capita basis have long since surpassed those of Italy and France, and by 2017, the Chinese could even have gone past the Americans.

Even Chinese experts acknowledged that their country's emissions would peak only in 2030 at the earliest, taking the most optimistic scenario as the basis.

Read more about China

Read more about US