At the time of the first major climate change conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, China was one of the least developed nations. Its per capita income was below that of Haiti, Niger and Pakistan. Its export sector was smaller than that of Sweden or Austria, and its airports saw fewer departures than Norway’s.
Its emissions were just 12 percent of the global total, and on a per capita basis, it was not even among the top 50 emitters. As recently as 1985, China had generated less electricity than Canada and produced less steel than West and East Germany.
With nations set to gather for the latest such meeting in Dubai this week, things have changed beyond recognition.
Illustration: Kevin Sheu
China is likely to produce half the world’s steel and coal this year, and emit more carbon than every developed nation put together. Even adjusting for its huge population, it now consumes more energy and generates more pollution per person than most countries in western Europe. Visitors to its sparkling cities find a country whose amenities rival those of the richest nations. China’s roads, railways, power facilities, public buildings and other infrastructure now add up to a richer stock of public capital per capita than could be found in Australia, Spain or the UK.
One last crucial measure might soon flip. When China joined the WTO in 2001, it was barely outside of the ranks of low-income countries, a category the World Bank reserves for the least developed nations. That gave considerable weight to the claim that its emissions needed to be given a pass — that it should, in the language of climate diplomacy still quoted today, benefit from “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
Rapid growth relative to the world since the COVID-19 pandemic means it is now closely tracking the dividing line the World Bank uses to separate high-income nations from upper-middle-income countries. Low inflation and a stable exchange rate might push it above that level in a matter of months.
“It is very close to reaching the threshold for a high-income country,” Yale University professor Penny Goldberg, the bank’s chief economist from 2018 to 2020, replied in an e-mail. “It may not happen this coming year, but it will happen very soon.”
Economically, this would count as one of the most remarkable transformations in human history, and comes decades earlier than anticipated. In the same year as the Rio conference, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) said it would be “an extraordinary achievement” if China were able to attain the status of a moderately developed country by 2049.
In terms of global warming and the diplomacy centered around it, however, it would shake up assumptions held for decades. UN climate conferences typically break into debates between large voting blocs of member states. The prime negotiators on one side are the G7, representing developed states; on the other, the G77, a caucus of developing nations which counts China as its most important constituent, though it is not formally a G77 member.
It is an alliance that is looking less and less tenable as China’s wealth, development and financial capacity — not to mention its carbon footprint — come more and more to resemble the developed nations of the G7. Close to 60 percent of the increase in global emissions since 1992 has come from China alone, while pollution from developed countries has essentially stood still.
“We are an inbetweener now,” the incoming director of the Asia Society’s China climate hub Li Shuo (李碩) said. Despite the transformation in the country’s wealth and power, “our muscle memory is still very much in the developing world and the Global South. The result is we have an identity crisis.”
The bigger question would be around how others perceive this. Countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and small island nations make up the bulk of the G77 members and are already finding themselves most at risk from the growing effects of climate change. Flooding last year that caused more than US$30 billion of damage in Pakistan and years of droughts that have left 4.35 million people in the Horn of Africa dependent on aid were both exacerbated by human emissions.
Increasingly, it is China that is causing that pollution. Even if you factor in its late start to industrialization, since 1850 its cumulative emissions from fossil fuels and land use practices have amounted to 309 billion metric tonnes, according to the Global Carbon Project, ahead of the 306 billion tonnes in the EU and trailing only the US.
The US and EU are aiming to reduce emissions in 2030 to about half of their levels in 2005, but China is on track to roughly double the size of its footprint. The galloping pace of its renewables installations and the weakened state of its real-estate market might well ensure that pollution starts falling as soon as next year — but the government has no commitment to do so until 2030 or even a promise about what the peak level would be.
One possible breakthrough would come from finance. A traditional bargain in climate meetings has been that rich countries should rein in emissions at home while providing funding for other nations to invest in preventing and adapting to climate change. Wealthy nations might have finally hit a target to provide US$100 billion a year for such initiatives, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said last month.
That is an area where China has natural advantages. One of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) signature policies has been the Belt and Road Initiative, a project to build infrastructure projects in strategically significant countries in Asia and beyond. Promises to “green” the initiative have seen emphasis shift from projects like the fleet of coal-fired power plants constructed in Pakistan over the past decade to providing an export market for the terawatts of solar equipment that Chinese factories are to produce over the coming years. With the country’s current account surplus now as large in dollar terms as it was during the peak of the late-2000s export surge, there is no shortage of capital.
The best way for China to escape its current dilemma is to accept that it is now a rich country and to behave accordingly. Lean toward the fall in emissions as the economy grows beyond the carbon-intensive phase of its industrialization. Pump money into a fund for less developed allies to prepare their own infrastructure for a net zero emissions world. Take the opportunity of US President Joe Biden’s absence from this year’s UN conference to seize the role of the world’s undisputed climate leader and start pushing for more, not less, ambition.
The environment has for several years been an area where Beijing has sought to practice “major country diplomacy” — behaving as a rich and responsible power that others could look up to and seek to emulate. The longer it waits before accepting that it has already cashed the moral benefits of carbon-intensive industrialization, the harder it would be for it to make common cause with nations that would look to follow its development path.
David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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