China Environmental Law

Looks like everyone is playing “decode the President.”  Here is what Obama said during his opening remarks at the latest round of the US-China S&ED:

“And the best way to foster the innovation that can increase our security and prosperity is to keep our markets open to new ideas, new exchanges, and new sources of energy.

Brad Plumer at TNR’s The Vine was first out of the box with this assessment:

Sure sounds like Obama’s reassuring Beijing that he’s opposed to using carbon tariffs to coerce China into action on climate change, as Congress has proposed.

Brad is no fan of “border adjustments” so it is understandable he would be pre-disposed to hear the President’s remarks as unilateral disarmament in the incipient global green war.

He acknowledges in an “update” to his post that there may be better interpretations.  He cites to the WSJ’s Environmental Capital Blog which suggests that an alternative reading of the President’s remarks is that they are

a reference to the spat over how to share clean technology with developing nations without weakening intellectual-property provisions? Poor countries want lots of new technology, but the people that make that stuff worry they’ll be thrown under the bus in the name of the global climate fight.

Closer perhaps, but no cigar.  Technology transfer is certainly an important issue, but while in a very broad sense “weakening intellectual-property protections” in the context of such transfers could be seen as a failure “to keep our markets open,” the President’s words don’t admit to this reading easily.  It would have been much clearer to say “and the best way to foster innovation is to protect the legal frameworks which have proven to be the most effective drivers of new solutions”, etc.

Here’s my take.  Remember that Secretaries Chu and Locke were just in China.  Secretary Locke in particular got an earful about Chinese “green” protectionism, and he expressed these concerns to his Chinese hosts:

Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke were in Beijing to lobby China to promote private-sector development of solar, wind, biofuels and other clean energy.

Locke appealed to China to avoid trade barriers to clean technology. Some companies say Beijing is trying to build up its industry by shielding companies from competition, shutting foreign competitors out of wind power and other projects.

“We need to empower U.S. and Chinese entrepreneurs and innovators to create and collaborate free from artificial trade barriers,” Locke said in a speech to an audience of American businesspeople.

Also Wednesday, Locke urged China to help revive world growth by opening its markets further and easing currency controls. . . .

Protectionism or barring foreign companies from Chinese contracts could be a “serious threat to trade cooperation,” Locke warned.

(see also this China Daily story and this NYT story)

No doubt he debriefed the President about these concerns, and that lead to the sentence in question in the President’s S&ED remarks.  The President was urging the Chinese to keep their renewable energy and energy efficiency markets open to foreign businesses and halt the trend toward green protectionism.  I think this interpretation fits the actual language better than the other suggested readings.

In any event, perhaps the sentence was too enigmatic if three native English speakers of at least moderate intelligence and above average knowledge in this specialized space had such a hard time deciphering it.  I wonder what the Chinese made of it.