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Chinese Politics, Energy Policy, and the International Climate Change Negotiations
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Abstract
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In the context of climate change, China is the most important country in East Asia - and perhaps the world in the long term. It contributes massively (albeit not on a per capita basis) to the pollutants causing global warming and, on a human scale, it will experience some of the greatest resulting hardship. The role of Chinese domestic and energy politics in the international climate change negotiations is explored by Michael T. Hatch in Chapter 3. Hatch argues that in most of the developing world global warming often hardly makes a ripple on the domestic scene, with more urgent problems like widespread poverty and degradation of air and water resources pressing upon local populations. What has become clear, however, is the necessity of developing country involvement if the climate change regime is to be effective in the long term. As suggested above, China clearly matters in this respect. Without substantial efforts on the part of China to limit future carbon dioxide emissions, any measures undertaken by other countries to mitigate global warming will be much less effective. Hatch shows how international factors were critical in the early formulation of China's strategy to address global warming. Most importantly, the domestic political process was driven by the necessity of responding to an international agenda pushed initially by transnational actors and international organizations. In the absence of pressures from abroad, according to Hatch, it is unlikely that China would have devoted much attention to the global warming question. In 1990, for example, China's position was hammered out among various bureaucratic agencies. It emphasized, among other things, the preservation of China's national sovereignty, the right to economic development, historical responsibility of industrialized countries in addressing the problem, and the provision of new funding and technology to developing countries.
These initial positions were not immovable, however. Once engaged in the international negotiating process, China found it necessary to compromise in several areas, and at times to change its position in order to preserve a unified position with other developing countries. At the same time, forces within the domestic political process placed constraints on Chinese participation, constraints related to the priority of economic development and its implications for energy policy. Most importantly, bureaucratic actors came to dominate the policy process, thereby limiting the influence of domestic interests favoring restructuring the energy sector and GHG emissions limitations. Nonetheless, the relative influence of domestic actors was not immutable. Considerable fluidity exists in China's domestic policy process was demonstrated by shifts its negotiating position on joint implementation (whereby polluters can avoid their own GHG emissions cuts by purchasing emissions reductions taken in other countries) and its more recent interest in the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was formulated to provide aid from developed to developing countries for GHG reduction projects. Indeed, there are ongoing struggles over the future direction of China's energy policy, and therefore more potential changes to come. Hatch argues that outside actors may be able to influence the outcome of internal struggles through approaches that help reinforce the more environmentally proactive forces in the domestic policy process.
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