China signaled it plans to take a more important role in steering the global campaign to tackle climate change, as officials offered further details on strategy to mitigate and adapt to rising temperatures.
The nation “will constructively lead the multilateral governance process to address climate change,” said a 15th five-year plan published by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Development and Reform Commission, and other key agencies.
“China’s influence, guiding capacity, shaping power and moral appeal in global climate governance will be significantly enhanced” through 2030, according to the document issued Monday, the latest in a torrent of policy strategies setting out the fine details of plans to meet climate and energy targets.
The language reflects a recent shift from China’s previous positioning, when the nation — the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — had described itself in official documents “as a participant, contributor and leader” in global climate efforts.
“It is quite striking that they have decided to put wording like this into the 15th five-year plan now,” said Belinda Schäpe, China team lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “For me, it raises a lot of questions on how that will actually translate.”
The world’s No. 2 economy has often frustrated advocates of faster and more ambitious cuts to emissions, particularly over a reluctance to take a greater role in delivering climate finance to poorer nations. At an annual United Nations climate summit in Brazil last year, China didn’t join a group of nations supporting plans to accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels, and instead focused on promoting the open trade of green technologies.
China’s newly issued policy plans reflect that priority, calling for “the free flow of green and low-carbon products.” It’s an outcome that would benefit China’s green manufacturing juggernauts, which increasingly need overseas markets to compensate for flagging domestic demand.
“The indicated shift toward a more proactive — and sometimes assertive — approach is already evident in recent climate negotiations,” said Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia. “It’s also important to note that the shift happens only on a limited number of topics, especially on the nexus between climate change and trade.”
China’s latest policy plan “is a clearer articulation of what China thinks, in which green technology and green trade take a central role,” she said.
Since President Donald Trump announced his plan last year to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, a directive completed in January, China has reaffirmed its commitments to global climate action. President Xi Jinping pledged in September that China would be “striving to do better” than a target to reduce greenhouse gases between 7% and 10% by 2035.
That medium-term emissions goal, which has been criticized as unambitious, is intended to addresses polluting gases beyond carbon dioxide, including methane and nitrous oxide.
The latest policy document from the ecology ministry reiterates an aim to cut non-CO2 gases by 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, with a focus on areas including capturing methane from mines, cutting industrial nitrous oxide pollution, phasing out hydroflurocarbons and controlling powerful sulfur hexafluoride emissions, which are released from electrical equipment in power grids.
The plans reinforces that non-CO2 greenhouse gases “are becoming an integral part of China’s climate strategy,” said Meian Chen, senior program director for beyond carbon at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress, a Beijing-based think tank.
Other focus areas in the latest strategy include making improvements to short-term extreme weather warning systems and flood control in northern China, the better mapping of climate risk zones across the country and efforts to locate industry and population centers in lower-risk areas.
Photograph: Waves surge over a promenade during Super Typhoon Ragasa in Hong Kong, China; photo credit: Justin Chin/Bloomberg
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