China Environmental Law

China has certainly been cozying up to Japan on the climate change front recently.  Earlier this month Hu Jintao and Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda agreedto strengthen climate change cooperation, and yesterday, Bloomberg is reporting,

China said it wants Japan to set up a forum in Tokyo with developers of clean technologies this year to help the world’s fastest-growing major economy find ways to reduce carbon emissions.

Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, proposed holding the meeting when he met yesterday with Japan’s Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita, a ministry official told reporters under the condition of anonymity. Xie and Kamoshita are attending the Group of Eight environment ministers meeting in Japan’s western city of Kobe.

Japanese businesses have developed their share of “clean technologies,” but so have a number of other nations. Why is China proposing to pay a shopping visit on the Japanese environmental industry?  As the article notes “Japan, hosting the G-8 summit in July, is taking the initiative in persuading developing nations to take part in a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.” So by currying favor with Japan and Japanese businesses, China is winning points with the G-8 point nation for post-Kyoto negotiations with the “developing nations,” including China.

The strategy appears to be working. As we have noted previously, China is angling for massive amounts of financial and technological support to get it to the post-Kyoto table. This theme was reiterated at the Kobe meeting, according to a Reuters report:

“Technology and finance should be taken up in discussions,” said China’s Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Japan seems to be singing China’s “climate change” song Reuters noted

“We need to send a message that we will make it easier for emerging countries to act, with financial mechanisms and technological cooperation,” Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita told reporters.

The US is maintaining its position that it will not commit to any binding limits until there are “commitments from top developing countries like China first,” although it did voice support “for a global fund for clean technology research.”

There are some who warn that forcing China and other large developing countries to accept internationally binding limits could undermine emissions trading under the treaty because the limits would need to be set so high to induce the agreement of those countries. I doubt that these arguments will have much success, but they are worth considering.

In any event the positions of the parties seem pretty clear at this point. If there is a post-Kyoto deal that includes both the US and China, the only question will be how much money and technological was required to induce China to accept a fairly high carbon limit.

Personnel Note: Xie Zhenhua, currently vice minister of the NDRC, was the Minister of SEPA (MEP’s predecessor). He took the fall for the Songhua River spill, although it really was not his responsibility, and was dismissed. Several months later, he was given the NDRC slot which at the time, was arguably a promotion.  As you can see, it is often hard to keep track of who is up and who is down.