In Counter to Trump, China Opens Up to EU During Climate Talks

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(Bloomberg) — China has a chance at the COP29 climate summit to score points with the European Union, potentially easing trade tensions over its green exports to the bloc by helping secure agreement on the key unresolved issue in the two-week negotiations.

The imminent return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House has weakened US credibility at the UN conference and increased pressure on the European Union to act and help reach a deal to raise more financial aid for developing countries. China wants to play a role in making that happen without prolonging the meeting, according to people familiar with the country’s negotiating strategy.

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The main stumbling block has been China’s status as a developing country, in the diplomatic categories set by the UN climate negotiations, as well as being the world’s second-largest economy and a dominant producer of green technologies. The Chinese team drew a red line when being classified as an official donor country under the Paris Agreement, but is willing to contribute more voluntarily, the sources said.

Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that their country has provided 177 billion yuan ($24 billion) in project funds to help other developing countries deal with climate change since 2016, on par with some advanced economies.

“If China and the EU can effectively cooperate on the COP29 agenda, it will lay a solid foundation for realigning their broader green and economic initiatives and improving bilateral relations,” said Li Xu, director of the closely watched Asia Community Policy Institute. Follows China’s international climate policy. He said both sides need a strong starting point for managing trade disputes, similar to the discussions between China and the United States that helped pave the way for an easing of the trade war during Trump’s first term.

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China has become an increasingly central figure at annual climate summits. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, it can do more than any other country to slow the rise in global temperatures. But the Asian country is also struggling with its own economic problems and is not in a position to pledge a significant increase in funding. In addition, it claims that it is still a developing country, and that the countries that industrialized first must bear the greatest burden in compensating other countries for the consequences of carbon pollution.

“As a developed country with the largest economy and the largest cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases in the world, the United States must shoulder its responsibilities,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday in response to a question about China’s future climate finance. Contributions. “The Paris Agreement is clear about who will pay for it.”

This year’s climate summit got off to a bumpy start. Negotiators have made little progress in achieving their main goal: reaching a new post-2025 target for rich countries to raise money to help poor countries cut emissions and adapt to more extreme weather. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is leading a campaign against efforts to replicate and implement last year’s agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

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Azerbaijan, the host country, has struggled to get countries on the same page on both fronts, while its president has courted controversy by insulting other countries and defending dirty energy. China wants to help the COP29 presidency turn this year’s meeting into a success, the people familiar with the matter said.

One way this could happen is for the EU and China to reach a compromise on financial contributions. And since the United States is expected to be only a minor contributor to public climate finance over the next four years, at least, it has lost some leverage to demand a tougher deal to bring China more clearly into the financing fold.

This created an opportunity for the EU to defend language in the final deal that includes more voluntary contributions instead, along with a more transparent accounting of what was provided to each country after the fact. The bloc’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, indicated on Monday that he would be open to China making a voluntary commitment to provide climate finance to the global South.

“It would be welcome if those countries took such a step,” he said in a press conference on Monday, referring to China and other countries including Singapore, South Korea and the oil-rich Gulf states. “This is about solving one of the biggest problems facing humanity at this time.”

-With assistance from John Inger and Jennifer Dlouhy.

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