China appealed on Monday to exclude its giant export sector in the next treaty on climate change, as doubts grow whether the world can close ranks by a deadline of December.
Rich nations buying Chinese goods bear responsibility, a Chinese negotiator said, estimating that export production caused up to 20 percent of the Asian power’s carbon emissions.
“It is a very important item to make a fair agreement,” senior Chinese climate official Li Gao (李高) said during a visit to Washington.
Climate envoys from China, Japan and the EU were holding talks with the White House as the clock ticks to the December conference in Copenhagen meant to approve a post-Kyoto Protocol deal.
Developed nations demand that developing countries such as China and India take action under the new treaty. They had no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, leading former US president George W. Bush to reject it.
But Li said it was unfair to put the highest burden on China, which by some measures has surpassed the US as the world’s top emitter.
“We are at the low end of the production line for the global economy,” Li told a forum.
“We produce products and these products are consumed by other countries, especially the developed countries. This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers but not the producers,” he said.
Li said Beijing was not trying to avoid action on climate change, adding that US President Barack Obama in his address to Congress last month said China “has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient.”
Li’s remarks were met with skepticism, with other negotiators saying it would be a logistical nightmare to find a way to regulate carbon emissions at exports’ destinations.
Asking importers to handle emissions “would mean that we would also like them to have jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those,” top EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said.
“I’m not sure whether my Chinese colleague would agree on that particular point,” he said.
China’s chief climate official, Xie Zhenhua (謝振華), was also in Washington, where he met US global warming point man Todd Stern, who praised Beijing’s “broad work” on climate change but sought greater cooperation.
“This is a historic opportunity for both countries to contribute to a better future for the planet,” the State Department quoted Stern as saying.
But Obama has run into resistance in Congress from members of the Republican Party who say tough measures to reduce emissions would hurt the economy.
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which organized the forum, said that countries should be ready to accept setting only a framework in Copenhagen.
“We can still make very substantial progress toward a final agreement and perhaps the best way to do that is aiming for a strong interim agreement in Copenhagen,” she said.
Runge-Metzger said the EU believed the world now had the political will for an agreement in Copenhagen but said “it doesn’t have to be a deal that goes into each and every technical detail.”
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for