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XJinping must have suspected that Donald Trump would use the UN general debate to launch a frontal attack on China. In any case, the Chinese head of state responded with a diplomatic counterattack in his speech, which was broadcast just half an hour after Trump’s appearance. He surprised the UN General Assembly by announcing a new climate target for China. “Our goal is for carbon dioxide emissions to peak by 2030 and to achieve climate neutrality by 2060,” Xi Jinping said. Until then, China had never set a specific date for the desired climate neutrality. And with the word “before” ahead of the 2030 annual goal, Xi made a concession, even if the vague wording left him room for future negotiations. So far, Beijing has talked about “around 2030.”
The place and time of the announcement were well calculated. A few minutes earlier, Donald Trump had praised “America’s unprecedented environmental record” and complained that his country was under attack while “China’s excessive pollution was ignored.” In this context, it was particularly easy for Xi Jinping to present himself as a reliable supporter of the Paris Climate Agreement. Even Greenpeace now has praise. “It’s a pretty bold move, both politically and technically,” says Li Shuo, an expert on climate and energy policy at Greenpeace in Beijing. To achieve the “ambitious” goal of climate neutrality in less than 40 years, it is necessary to limit the increase in coal consumption immediately and put food production in the country on “drastically different” bases, Li says. China is currently in the final phase of drawing up the new five-year plan for the years 2021 to 2025. Only if concrete measures are established in it, can Xi Jinping’s goal be achieved.
When China makes promises, they cannot always be expected to be kept. “Promise fatigue” has long been a household word in Beijing. But when the top leader is committed to a specific goal, it has a different quality and generally sets in motion frenzied activity at all levels of the state apparatus.
In recent months, Europeans in particular had urged China to commit to more ambitious climate goals. The year 2060 was mentioned over and over again in Brussels and Berlin. Europeans would even prefer that China cut its carbon dioxide emissions starting in 2025. Xi Jinping didn’t go that far, but he didn’t rule it out with his “before 2030” formulation.
Of course, China is not a model boy in climate policy. The most populous country in the world is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for 28 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. More recently, China was ridiculed because it continued to focus on expanding the use of coal and invested heavily in the construction of such power plants internationally.
It is unclear how Xi intends to achieve the goals.
Now, the Chinese leadership is once again using climate policy to promote itself as a trusted partner internationally. That worked well in 2014 and 2017. In 2014, Xi Jinping shone alongside Barack Obama when the two agreed on new climate targets in swift action. In 2017, Beijing “unswervingly” supported the Paris climate agreement after Donald Trump announced his departure from his country. On Tuesday, Xi Jinping sounded like a Fridays for Future activist: “Humanity can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature,” he said.
However, Xi Jinping did not elaborate. In this regard, it is not entirely clear how your country intends to reach the new finish line. That could also depend on who is elected as the next American president in November.
