CANCUN, Mexico—China is turning heads at the Cancun climate summit with a surprising new strategy: a charm offensive.
Longtime followers of the climate talks—and of China—have been resigned to information lockdown from the government for years. It has been notoriously difficult for foreign officials or media to gain access to Chinese officials or data, in Beijing or at global talks. At last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, China’s hard-line approach to negotiations was evident in its choreographed public events, at which top officials pulled no punches against the U.S.
This Chinese delegation seems almost unrecognizable at first blush. It keeps the office doors open for drop-ins, and a staff of young, English-speaking press officers welcome visitors with a smile, a booklet on “China’s New Energy,”— and an until-now-unheard-of offer of a private interview with a senior Chinese negotiator. Chinese delegates approached outside of meetings said they were not authorized to speak to the press—but volunteered the name and cell phone number of an official who was. One Chinese staffer even offered to go into a closed meeting, find her boss, and bring him out to talk to a reporter. All around the Moon Palace resort are glossy stacks of “China Daily” magazines—with feature stories in English.
Delegates and NGO workers report experiencing the same remarkable new openness, as Chinese officials have reached out to groups to set up dinners and other social meetings with key American groups in Cancun—a day-from-night change from years past, they say.
Behind the scenes, China is maintaining as hard a line as ever on its central negotiating posture: It flatly refuses U.S. demands that it commit to reducing carbon emissions. But there is one major point on which it has softened: outside monitoring of its carbon on emissions.
Last year in Copenhagen, Chinese officials slammed demands that it open its books and allow outside governments to monitor and verify emissions, calling it an unacceptable infringement of sovereignty. But Americans say that that position has quietly shifted over the past year—and that China is working on a plan to monitor and record its emissions—to a position of allowing some form of outside verification.
China experts say they see a three-fold strategy at work. Broadly, they say that China wants to transform and modernize its perception on the world stage as it becomes a powerful political and economic player. Within the context of the climate talks, where the United States is on the defensive and viewed in a negative light for its failure to enact climate legislation at home, China sees an opportunity to come out on top in the propaganda wars—both in foreign media headlines and in the eyes of other countries.
And what is the motivation for the transparency on emissions monitoring?
“The reason they’re now so interested in carbon [monitoring, reporting, and verification] is that they’re interested in joining the carbon market. They see money to be made,” said Barbara Finamore, a senior China policy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
China is exploring the possibility of enacting a cap-and-trade policy—and eventually linking up to the $138 billion global carbon market. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China’s entrance in that market would send that value as high as $2 trillion, experts have said. That would make China a major global financial player—and it could reap powerful political benefits.
It already profits from existing carbon markets. Last year, it raked in $2 billion of the European Union’s $2.9 billion carbon offset market, in which European polluters pay for carbon-reduction projects, such as construction of wind and solar plants. Creating its own market and directly linking to the European market could multiply that figure exponentially. And linking into a global market would spread out China’s own carbon-reduction costs.
And experts say that China has recognized that in order to plug into a global market, it must be able to show transparent, consistent data about its own carbon emissions. Experts also say that along with the new friendly outreach and invitations to dinner have come a slew of requests for information about U.S. greenhouse-data-monitoring tools and carbon market financial brokers.
For example, U.S. climate experts say the Chinese requested a visit to the first voluntary U.S. carbon market, the Chicago Climate Exchange. That market—created in anticipation that the U.S. would eventually have a national mandatory market—closed last month, after efforts to create a U.S. carbon market died in the Senate over the summer. Since then, Chinese requests have focused more on financial brokers who operate the climate markets in Europe.
“Climate change is one of many ways in which China is becoming increasingly integrated with the world economy,” said Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Forum. “When you have a well-functioning carbon market and you’re linked in with Merrill Lynch and those traders in London, you’re linked in to those corporations and interests in other avenues.”
This article appeared in the Friday, December 3, 2010 edition of National Journal Daily.
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