China's Role in Global Climate Change Mitigation

• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Ross Garnaut
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2014.12081.x

2China & World Economy / 2–18, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2014

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China’s Role in Global Climate Change Mitigation

Ross Garnaut*

Abstract

China contributed a majority of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in the first

11 years of this century. The trajectory of emissions has changed radically since then, as

China has implemented its Cancun 2010 commitment to reduce the 2005 emissions intensity

of economic activity by 40–45 percent by 2020. The change in trajectory has been reinforced

by China’s new model of economic growth, with its greater emphasis on equity in income

distribution, consumption and services. The large-scale deployment of low emissions

technology in China is lowering the cost of transition to a low carbon economy all over the

world. China’s new emissions trajectory improves the opportunity for the international

community to meet the 2°C climate target. It is essential that the changes in China are

brought to account in shaping global mitigation ambition.

Key words: climate change policy, energy, low carbon economy, renewable energy

JEL codes: Q54, Q58, O44

I. Introduction

The way that the international community manages human-induced climate change will

shape China’s future. China’s own policy will have large influence on how much damage is

done to China and the rest of the world by climate change. Strong and effective mitigation

in China is a necessary condition for achieving the United Nations goal to hold human-

induced increases in temperature to 2°C. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition, as

all other substantial countries will also have to make large contributions. Chinese policy

and diplomacy will influence the actions of other countries.

Many Chinese intellectual and political leaders are not yet accustomed to seeing China

as a great power, whose leadership is of central importance to global developments. Many

Chinese continue to think of their country as a weak developing country that must make its

*Ross Garnaut, Professor, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Professor, Chinese

Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China. Email: Ross.Garnaut@unimelb.edu.au.

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China’s Role in Global Climate Change Mitigation

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

way in an international system shaped by others. However, China, with its sustained

economic growth over 35 years since the 3rd Plenary meeting of the 11th Central Committee,

has long left that reality behind. China is now the world’s second largest economy on its

way to being the first, the world’s biggest exporter and trading economy, the world’s

biggest source of savings to support investment, by far the largest contributor to global

economic growth and by far the largest current source of greenhouse gas emissions into

the atmosphere. It is time to face the contemporary geo-political reality: China is the most

important player of all in humanity’s struggle to reconcile continued global economic

development with avoidance of dangerous disruption from climate change.

The good news is that there is close compatibility between policies that China now

favors for its own development and the policies that are necessary for China to do its fair

share in an effective global mitigation effort.

Chinese atmospheric science is of high quality. For more than two decades, Chinese

scientists have been alerting leaders to the risks for China from destabilization of flows in

the great rivers, drying of the North China Plain and increases in sea levels affecting human

settlements in the coastal commercial and industrial cities. China’s leaders are aware that

China shares with Australia and all other countries in the Asia Pacific region an interest in

avoiding the international political instability that would emerge from the impact of

unmitigated climate change in South-East and South Asia (Dupont and Pearman, 2006).

Chinese leaders have heeded scientific advice and attached importance to China’s

participation in work to combat climate change since the beginning of the international

effort more than two decades ago. However, it is only relatively recently that Chinese

leaders have absorbed into policy formation the increasingly important reality that Chinese

domestic and diplomatic actions are major determinants of the success of climate change

mitigation.

In early 2014, at a critical time for international action on climate change, the same

measures that are necessary to make a new model of economic development work in China

will place China in a strong position to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Garnaut et al.,

2013; Song et al., 2014). The new model has been emerging over the past half dozen years,

and was influential in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015). Over the past 2 years the model

has been elaborated by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang and endorsed by the

18th Conference of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the

18th Central Committee in 2013, the March 2014 National People’s Congress and subsequent

meetings of the State Council structural change that is necessary to sustain good economic

performances defined within the new model of economic growth will provide sound