China’s new climate negotiator takes swipe at US in debut at UN summit in Madrid

China’s new man in charge of climate negotiations made his debut at the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid on Tuesday, just as scientists warn global temperatures are rising faster than forecast.

With China the world’s biggest producer of carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet, the new man in the hot seat, 55-year-old Zhao Yingmin, faces an outsize set of challenges. He is joining delegates from nearly 200 countries in an effort to reach an agreement on curbing emissions and he wasted little time in criticising the US decision to pull out of the landmark Paris climate agreement of 2015.

Asked whether the withdrawal of the United States was good or bad news for China, Zhao said: “Addressing climate change is a joint global effort, [and] no one should be absent.

“China will work with all sides to … lay a solid foundation for the comprehensive implementation of the Paris climate accord.”

Zhao, the vice-minister of ecology and environment, replaces Xie Zhenhua, who represented China at the yearly talks over the past decade. The change comes as the climate summit, known as COP 25, enters its second week, where negotiators are expected to concentrate on plans for emissions trading and a controversial carbon offset system.

“In terms of experience, no one in China can compare to Xie,” said Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. “However, [Zhao’s] experience will be very helpful.”

The biggest impasse facing the negotiators is the highly contentious Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, designed to put in place a global carbon market. Ministers from New Zealand and South Africa are tasked with breaking the impasse, while countries like Saudi Arabia, Australia and Brazil are still blocking, according to Euroactiv, a Brussels-based network.

Zhao said that disagreements on this article were the top focus.

“Article 6 is a highlight of the meetings. All sides should work together for the purposes of achieving it as soon as possible,” he said.

A source close to Zhao singled out Brazil, saying that the current government that was being blamed for encouraging deforestation in the Amazon “has a lot of ideas contradicting most countries, even China”.

One of the first officials that Zhao met for talks was Laura Tuck, the World Bank’s vice-president for sustainable development. The global lender cut its development-related loans to China after US President Donald Trump complained the Asian giant was “too rich” to qualify.

Also at COP 25, US presidential hopeful and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg called for joint US-Chinese efforts to curb climate change.

“You will never solve the problem unless you have China in the solution,” said the billionaire who launched his Democratic presidential bid last month.

The challenge for China is its continued reliance on coal-fired power. Though costs for producing energy from renewable sources are now as low as fossil fuels, some Chinese policymakers have said renewables like wind and solar are unreliable sources. There are also concerns that decarbonisation will hurt the country’s coal regions.

In one of his three speeches at the China Pavilion, Zhao pledged to facilitate financing initiatives for climate change projects in China.

“Financing is a core and key part to handling climate change,” he said, though he did not address the concerns about non-renewable energy.

The UN Emissions Gap report published before the summit warned that temperatures were rising faster than expected, saying they “must drop rapidly” if countries were to stick to a target of limiting the rise to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius (34.7 and 35.6 Fahrenheit) to avoid the worst effects of extreme weather.

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During Xie’s decade in charge of China’s negotiating team, the country took an increasingly pivotal role in global discussions on climate change – especially following Trump’s announcement that the US would pull out of the Paris Agreement.

Xie’s departure coincides with a shift in responsibility for climate policy away from the National Development and Reform Commission, an economic policy body of which Xie was vice-chairman, to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2018.

Joanna Lewis, a specialist in China’s climate policies at Georgetown University in Washington, said the shift “has resulted in a deprioritisation of the roll-out of China’s national emissions trading system and a return to support for coal development to help invigorate the local economy”.

China has raised its coal power capacity by about 4.5 per cent in the past two years, according to Global Energy Monitor, a US-based research group that tracks coal usage around the world, while plans for the emissions trading system – first announced six years ago – are behind schedule.

Ma said the fact Zhao had experience in tackling pollution from his time at the National Environmental Protection Agency – of which he was a director before joining the environment ministry – should prove valuable.

But he said Zhao would need to consider factors such as a slowing economy and the US withdrawal when taking part in the talks.

One of the main issues in Madrid is a European Union proposal for a cross-border carbon tax, which China opposes.

On Wednesday, He Jiankun, deputy director of China’s national expert committee on climate change, said that such a measure unilaterally would hinder the talks.

“Imposing something like CO2 tariffs would actually create more uncertainties for the process,” He, who is also a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said.

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Another area of contention will be the controversial carbon offsetting system agreed under the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force in 2005.

This allows countries to gain emissions reduction credits by financing environmental projects in developing countries. China, the biggest beneficiary, wants these to be transferred to the Paris Agreement.

Gilles Dufrasne, a policy officer on carbon pricing at Carbon Market Watch, a Brussels-based non-governmental organisation, said that reaching an agreement on these two areas would be the biggest priority at the summit.

But he talks on the latter were “moving slowly, if at all”, he said.

China’s status as the world’s biggest polluter made its stance especially important, Dufrasne said.

“It doesn’t just fall on the shoulders of China. It’s important that China, just like every other country, increases its targets and revises its [self-reported goals] by 2020.”