What Beijing says about climate change is nearly the exact opposite of what it does on climate change.
In reality, China uses its carbon emissions diplomacy only to leverage its actual priorities. The old game: China makes a fanfare of offering carbon cuts, but then fails to follow through. China’s construction of hundreds of new, dirty coal plants proves its grotesque gall in this regard.
But as the United States struggles to gain bolder Chinese carbon cuts, Washington has a new opportunity to catch Beijing out — more specifically, to catch China between its rhetoric and its consolidation of the European Union’s favor.
This bears note as U.S. climate envoy John Kerry completes climate talks outside Beijing. Kerry pushed for bolder carbon cuts. China, predictably, refused to deal. Instead, Kerry says Chinese officials warned him that adversarial U.S.-China relations are obstructing new carbon emission reduction agreements. That warning was echoed by a Chinese propaganda editorial that warned, “No matter in which field the U.S. hopes to cooperate with China … such joint work must be linked with the entire China-U.S. relationship.”
Translation: Unless you, America, stop challenging our genocide against the Uyghurs, our annihilation threats against Taiwan, our maritime piracy, our cyberwarfare, our breach of treaty commitments in Hong Kong, and our efforts to replace the U.S.-led liberal international order with a Chinese-led feudal authoritarian order, we won’t cooperate on climate change.
I say fine. Let China take that position. And let it stand by that position in its talks with the European Union.
Let Beijing explain to its EU friends why it won’t help address the top EU foreign policy concern. Let Xi Jinping explain why, last September, he promised to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 and to do even more in the intervening period. There is great value to catching China between its hot air rhetoric and its pernicious zero-sum negotiating strategy.
After all, the EU is currently at the heart of a struggle between the U.S. and China over the global order in the 21st century. China wants the EU to agree to close its eyes to Beijing’s human rights abuses and imperial excesses in return for massive trade and investment. That gambit forms the foundation of China’s strategy to subjugate the West: separating allies by their oceans. In contrast, the U.S. wants the EU to join with it in resisting China’s destabilizing and undemocratic practices. But if, as here, China behaves with a patent disregard for the single most important foreign policy issue on the EU’s docket?
Well, that’s not exactly going to go down well in Brussels and Strasbourg, France. If China persists in this course of action, it will only cause the EU to move closer to America. The European Parliament is already outraged by China’s human rights policies and attitude toward Taiwan. This has had an impact: A much-vaunted trade deal has been put on the back burner. Pressure is rising in other areas.
Beijing does not have the political capital to play this climate game. Washington should call Beijing’s bluff.
