China Environmental Law

The public pronouncements weren’t encouraging, but perhaps the private discussions are getting somewhere.  The only story I have seen is one from Xinhua which at first blush only contains bland platitudes and the obligatory sit and chat picture.

The story reports on a meeting between Todd Stern and Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang.  Here are the important remarks from Vice Premier Li:

Li said China approves the fulfillment of the Bali Roadmap as the key mission of the Copenhagen Conference, and also approves promoting the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol in a comprehensive, efficient and consistent way.

China would like to maintain the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” among developed and developing countries, actively participate in negotiations and play a constructive role to promote positive results from the conference, Li added.

On the surface that sounds pretty innocuous, but let’s put it into context.  Stern noted in his pre-China trip testimony before the Center for American Progress that the US was pursuing a Copenhagen negotiation strategy “on three related fronts.”

First, we are fully engaged now in the Framework Convention negotiating process itself. We have a team in Bonn right now for the second of several negotiating sessions this year. You can’t get a global deal done relying only on the Framework Convention process, but you also can’t get there without it. It is an essential part of the whole.

Second, we have established an invigorated dialogue among 16 of the largest economies - including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Indonesia - through our Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which will meet in July in Italy immediately after the G8 meeting. . . . These meetings can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat, but they do allow for an important, candid dialogue.

Third, we are focusing on key bilateral relationships, and none is more important than China. China may not be the alpha and omega of the international negotiations, but it is close. Certainly no deal will be possible if we don’t find a way forward with China. And here, as in so many aspects of climate change, we are faced with both great challenge and great opportunity.

Stern is obviously in China to advance the ball on the third front, but the Vice Premier is telling him it only wants to play within the context of the first front-the Framework negotiating process.  Read most pessimistically, the Li Keqiang is telling Stern to get lost. Read most charitably, Li Keqiang has seen nothing in Stern’s visit that will move him off China’s standard talking points.

Some may find comfort in the that fact that the Vice Premier used the word “approves” rather than “insists on” and “would like to” as opposed to “demands,” but these could only be vagaries in the translation.

Elizabeth Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director, Asia Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations, in her recent testimony before the Senate Public Relations Committee made the excellent point that

unlike China’s WTO accession, which raised many similar issues of sovereignty, verification and compliance, intellectual property rights, and China’s relative economic status, there is no-one in China that has yet stepped up to seize global climate change as his/her issue and to shepherd it through the bureaucracy in the manner of former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji.

She is absolutely right about the magnitude of the effort, the fact that it must cut through the tough, unimaginative Chinese bureaucracy, and the need for a powerful champion.  If there is one person on the Politburo Standing Committee who would be the most likely candidate to assume the role of climate change “shepherd,” it is Li Keqiang.  He shows no desire to pick up his crook yet.

The private discussions may be going better (let’s hope so), and we will need to await the visit-end summations to get a clear sense of where things stand.  The initial indications, however, are not particularly encouraging.