China Environmental Law

I was in Beijing at the beginning of the week to moderate a panel at the 8th Transnational Corporations China Forum 2010 organized by Chinese Academy of International Trade & Economic Cooperation, Ministry of Commerce, to discuss the strategic opportunities and compliance management of multinational corporations in the post-financial crisis era.  My panel focused on [...]

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I will have a longer post on the Copenhagen Accord when the dust settles. It is pretty clear from the Chinese press reports that China doesn’t know what to make of the Accord or how to spin it yet. One thing is abundantly clear, however, unlike US commentators who have praised the Accord for moving [...]

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I’m going to avoid posting daily comments about what’s going on in Copenhagen, since I assume most readers know how to stay informed about the events.  You could have slept through the first three days, however, and not missed anything of substance.  My role is to bring your attention to the underreported stories that add [...]

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Now we know that China takes the Copenhagen round of climate change negotiations seriously.  It has developed one of those catchy (if often hard to translate) phrases with numbers to capture its core negotiating principles: “one target, two main channels, three principles, four consensus.” (一个目标，两个主渠道，三个原则，四个共识).
Oriental Outlook Weekly published an interview with Cao Rongxiang climate change [...]

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A “competition for dominance in the greentech “war” is being quietly started;” our competitor has “launched a new ‘carbon-economic revolution’” and we have been left behind at the “starting gate.”
Is Tom Friedman having another China moment?  No, these words come from a Chinese columnist in the China Youth Daily (A new era of “the old [...]

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In September President Hu Jintao announced at the United Nations that China would reduce the amount of its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by a “notable margin.”  We now have China’s definition of notable.  It means 40-45% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 (at the high end, that’s 3% off 2005 emissions per year).  [...]

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[Reprinted in full from The Economist, Economist Debate: "This house believes that China is showing more leadership than America in the fight against climate change" Please read and vote your conscience which will no doubt be in perfect harmony with the position expressed below]
China and the United States can and should do more to lead the world [...]

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I just finished reviewing the US-China Joint Clean Energy Agreements, and I barely have the motivation to type.  I know how much effort people of goodwill put into the work of securing substantive agreements in these areas.  The Chinese side while not positively obstructionist was, for the most part, not very interested in engaging in [...]

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If there has been a gradual “softening” in China’s climate change rhetoric lately, it was forcefully arrested today by the frosty, hard-line comments of China’s top climate change official, Xie Zhenhua, before a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC). Here’s what he said, in bullet form:

The conflict between developed countries [...]

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The Climate Group launched its second homage to China’s low carbon efforts yesterday, “China’s Clean Revolution II : Opportunities for a low carbon future.”  It starts well-enough with an acknowledgement (page 5) that
In recent years the scientific evidence on climate change has become increasingly clear: it is now almost universally accepted that, in order to [...]

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