Opinion | COP26: China’s leaders make climate change position clear but what do the people think?

Study last year shows climate change is not a priority for Chinese compared with air and water pollution, but they are growing more concerned about it

The support of its population, especially at grass-roots level, is key to China hitting its low-carbon target, and to stop relying on coal in particular

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China produces nearly 30 per cent of global emissions, more than the United States and European Union combined. Photo: Shutterstock Images

Published: 7:30pm, 2 Nov 2021Updated: 10:33pm, 2 Nov 2021

Squabbles at the United Nations climate talks in Glasgow between emerging powers led by Beijing and leading industrial nations grabbed international headlines, but they have received little media or public attention in China. At a time when China, the world’s top carbon emitter, is widely seen as key to the success of the COP26 meeting – a make-or-break opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – the silence speaks volumes.

While the absence of Chinese leaders in Glasgow may partly explain the scattered media coverage, it also points to a list of uneasy questions at the heart of China’s top-down approach to tackling global warming. Does the Chinese public care about climate issues at all? And if they do, why don’t they have a voice?

A study published last year showed that although climate change was not a priority for Chinese compared with air and water pollution, they were increasingly concerned about it. The study by two Chinese scholars, based on Chinese and overseas surveys since the late 1990s, found the perception change in China largely driven by persistent air pollution problems and government-led campaigns.

In a Pew Research Centre survey before the 2015 Paris climate talks, most of the more than 3,600 Chinese respondents considered climate change “a somewhat serious problem”. Another poll of 4,000 Chinese people by the China Centre for Climate Change Communication in 2017 found people were more worried about the warming planet than education, economic development and anti-terrorism.

A 2018 survey by the Innovative Green Development programme, a Chinese think tank, was even more revealing. When asked who should play a bigger role in tackling global warming, most of the 2,000 respondents from 20 Chinese cities pointed to the government, followed by the media, environmental groups, individuals and enterprises.

While the study and polls offer answers for the first question, it is also clear that for most Chinese people, climate change is an important but remote issue and it largely remains a headache for the government alone.