The crocodile tears of the rulers of China on the issue of arresting climate change have now been exposed.
Its commitment to climate talks is subject to Beijing being allowed to achieve its unacceptable political targets.
Vice President of China Han Zheng told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on July 19, 2023, that Beijing was willing to work with Washington on reducing global warming as long as its political demands were met, as reported by Xinhua, the official news agency of China.
Han Zheng’s communication to John Kerry that addressing climate change was “an important aspect of China-U.S. cooperation” but was conditional on mutual respect and must proceed “on the basis of the U.S. attending to core issues that concern both parties and fully engaging and exchanging ideas” was a somewhat roundabout way of telling the world that China must be allowed to annexe Taiwan unopposed, extend its hegemony over the South China Sea, occupy large tracts of Indian territories on the Sino-Indian border and exploit the poor and underdeveloped nations all over the globe under the garb of helping them with Belt and Road Initiative projects.
Beijing also wants unfettered access to advanced technology that would help it in producing weapons of war that it can use against the democratic countries.
Washington has lately imposed restrictions on exporting these technologies to China. In a meeting with Henry Kissinger on July 20, the former U.S. Secretary of State who has recently turned 100, Foreign Minister of China Wang Yi made one of these conditions clear, annexing Taiwan.
He demanded that the U.S. should stop backing the Taiwan government headed by President Tsai Ing-wen.
The top Chinese diplomat also made it clear to Kissinger that Beijing would not mend its ways and it was impossible to try to transform China.
The move of Beijing to halt engagements with Washington on climate change since the middle of 2022 has been described as “fundamentally irresponsible.” Washington had advised Beijing that by shutting down contact with the United States China would punish the whole world.
The Joe Biden government and its predecessor the Donald Trump government in the USA have, however, adopted a consistently tough posture to ensure the independent existence of Taiwan.
The former U. S. Secretary of State was on a personal visit to China. It may be recalled that China broke off contacts with the USA over climate change talks in a huff when Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022.
Thus, Beijing decided to hold the world at ransom over its differences with Washington on the Taiwan issue; for climate change is a subject that affects the whole world.
Among a number of other things, China is also the worst offender in the whole world as far as global warming is concerned and should not avoid participating in climate talks.
The communist country is the world leader in the production and consumption of coal, has gone ahead with building new thermal power plants and adds tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually.
The announced target of Beijing to level off carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060 to arrest global warming is too modest, to say the least.
The USA and the European Union have asked Beijing to adopt targets for faster reduction of carbon emission. In fact, though Washington had taken the initiative to send its climate envoy John Kerry to China to extend a hand of cooperation in arresting climate change, the response of Beijing to the move has been quite disappointing.
There was no immediate comment on the meeting between John Kerry and his counterpart in China Xie Zhenhua on July 17, in what was the first face-to-face discussion on climate between representatives of the two of the world’s worst climate polluting nations; thus indicating that talks were not fruitful.
There was no meeting scheduled with the paramount leader of China Xi Jinping. Foreign Minister of China Qin Gang has, in any case, vanished from public sight since the past three weeks. He has since been stripped of his post.
China overtook the U.S. in annual carbon emissions in 2006 and has remained the biggest emitter ever since.
Carbon emissions by China tripled between 2000 and 2019, while carbon emissions by the USA have dropped marginally over the past decade.
The biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, China releases nearly 30 percent of the lethal gas produced in the world by human activities.
The International Energy Agency estimates that in 2019 China emitted 9.9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, as against 4.7 billion tonnes by the USA that year.
China accounted for almost all of the global increase in electricity and heat sector emissions between 2019 and 2021.
A small decline recorded in the rest of the world was insufficient to offset the increase from China.
Chinese institutions are estimated to have financed over 55,000 MW of coal-fired power, leaving far behind other countries supporting the use of coal in power generation, like Japan and South Korea.
The success of a global strategy to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and combat global warming lies in cooperation between China and the USA, the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, to arrive at an acceptable strategy.
The move of Beijing to halt engagements with Washington on climate change since the middle of 2022 has been described as “fundamentally irresponsible.” Washington had advised Beijing that by shutting down contact with the United States China would punish the whole world.
Cooperation on issues of global concern should not be held hostage because of differences between China and the USA.
People of the whole world expected the USA and China to continue to tackle issues that mattered in the wellbeing of the people of the whole world.
Words of wisdom, however, seem to have fallen on deaf ears in Beijing.
The visit of Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan was, however, a mere pretext for Beijing to walk out of climate talks.
To put it bluntly, China is not interested in talks to arrest global warming as all these climate dialogues require coal-fired power stations to be phased out.
With China also increasing the generation of solar and wind power, only the optimists are hoping that the new additions to thermal generation capacity will be put into use actually to generate power only to meet the shortage in supply during the peak demand period.
But phasing-out of coal-based power stations stands against the serving of narrow Chinese interests.
China is setting up polluting coal-fired power stations in different underdeveloped countries through BRI.
Chinese institutions are estimated to have financed over 55,000 MW of coal-fired power, leaving far behind other countries supporting the use of coal in power generation, like Japan and South Korea.
Many coal-fired power stations in poor countries set up by China under the BRI have, however, been shelved or cancelled because of stiff opposition from the people living in the localities where these power plants are coming up; owing to the environmental pollution they are creating.
In Kenya and Egypt, power projects under the BRI have been shelved or cancelled because of protests from local people and due to inadequate environment impact assessment studies.
In 2020, Bangladesh refused to go ahead with some thermal power stations under the BRI.
In the same year, civil society groups in Turkey protested against Chinese banks investing in a coal-fired power station in the country.
A report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has exposed how the Chinese government is increasing at a rapid pace the construction of coal-fired power stations in its own country, making a mockery of the need to arrest climate change.
In 2022, the announcement of new coal-fired power stations and the beginning of their construction “increased dramatically,” the report said.
Thus Beijing, according to analysts, is trying to blackmail the rest of the world into getting its devious political agenda sanctioned in the name of climate control while in reality having no respect for the cause of climate change.
“The coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all the rest of the world combined.”
A total of 106 GW (1 GW = 1,000 MW) of new coal-based power projects were permitted, “the equivalent of two large coal-based power plants per week.”
The capacity of additional thermal power permitted more than quadrupled from 23 GW in 2021.
Most of the capacity additions are going to take place in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Anhul, Zhejiang and Hubei.
With China also increasing the generation of solar and wind power, only the optimists are hoping that the new additions to thermal generation capacity will be put into use actually to generate power only to meet the shortage in supply during the peak demand period.
For, with a heat wave sweeping across and the use of air-conditioners increasing steadily, the demand for power is rising rapidly in China.
Besides, the investors who are investing in this thermal generation capacity will not like to see their plants sitting idle.
Thus Beijing, according to analysts, is trying to blackmail the rest of the world into getting its devious political agenda sanctioned in the name of climate control while in reality having no respect for the cause of climate change.
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