The visit of Joe Biden’s ‘Climate Czar’ John Kerry to Beijing this week can now be safely described as at the very best a damp squib.
Prior to meeting with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua on Monday, Kerry had declared his intention to persuade the Chinese to join with the United States in “taking some big steps that will send a signal to the world about the serious purpose of China and the United States to address a common risk, threat, challenge to all of humanity, created by humans themselves.”
The Chinese, it would appear, were having none of that. Although Premier Li Qiang made references to China’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, it is clear that China’s interpretation of the “differentiated responsibilities” between the leading developed economies such as the US and the developing countries. of which the Chinese Communist Party poses as the representative, means that China does not accept that its own programme of industrial development ought to be limited by any meaningful targets.
China’s formal commitment to the goals set is that it will only begin reducing coal production in 2026; that it will only have reached peak carbon emissions by 2030, and that it has set 2060 as the date by which it will have become carbon neutral.
The fact that the China is this year again increasing its coal fired generating capacity makes a nonsense of all of that.
By the end of February, coal output had again grown by almost 6% and in 2022 the state approved 260 million tonnes of new capacity. Total annual Chinese coal production is over 3,800 million tonnes, which is seven times the annual production of the United States and twelve times that of the European Union. China accounts for half of all coal production on the planet, and more than half of all coal generated power.
Given those facts, it is not difficult to realise both why China is reluctant to go along with the climate change agenda that dominates the West – sometimes to an hysterical degree – nor why China’s position makes pretty much an absurdity of the pursuit of that agenda, particularly as it applies to small countries like Ireland.
Indeed, the fact that the Irish state has dismantled a successful domestic state enterprise built around turf in order to comply with that agenda must be of particular mirth to whichever officials of Chinese intelligence are tasked with monitoring the strange doings of an elite that is in thrall to an ideology whose fanatical adherents seem to have a blind spot towards China.
The day that climate extremists turn up to glue themselves to the gates of the Chinese Embassy, or spray paint on exhibits in the Cloisonne gallery in Beijing, or lie down in front of rush hour traffic on a busy Monday in Shanghai, is the day I’ll stand them an organic cranberry juice.
Not content with basically telling Kerry to take a hike, the Chinese orchestrated what might be interpreted as a diplomatic snub. Not only did President Xi not meet with him, and he had no obligation to, but went to the trouble of issuing a statement in which he told Kerry, via the news, that he had wasted more carbon pumping air miles bothering to make the journey.
Xi said that while “China’s commitments” to achieving the goals set are “unwavering,” that the pace and means with which those commitments will be met “must be determined by the country itself rather than swayed by others.” He concluded by re-emphasising that “guaranteeing oil and gas security” remain the priority. Not the objectives of the climate lobby.
Yesterday, Kerry was embarrassingly forced to respond by stressing that the United States was not in the business of “dictating anything to anybody,” and that they would continue “coordinating the way we are and working together the way we are.”
Exactly. The West will continue to pursue this agenda at all costs while the Chinese will do as they please. We knew that on Monday morning.
And the Chinese will pursue that path with a growing audience of developing countries who increasingly prefer the Chinese way and Chinese power and finance to a West led by a superpower that appears more interested in catering to the left of the Democratic Party on all fronts rather than standing up for what the West is supposed to represent.
It is important too that those who are rightly disgusted by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of most of the main leaders in the West do not decide that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Xi and the Chinese Communist Party are no friends of those who would defend the western tradition and its values. It may be true that China will not tolerate some of the degeneracy that is celebrated here, but they are happy to promote it in the West, and are supportive, both openly and covertly, of the forces that are in the forefront of undermining western values and the structures that have sustained them over two millennia.
So while the Chinese may be correct in placing national interests first, and it is true that this ought to be the priority of other states including our won, Xi is no more a “tough guy” who deserves to be the object of respect and admiration than was Mao, Stalin or Hitler.
If we must admire anyone in that unfortunate country it is those who the victims of Communist totalitarianism and those like Cardinal Zen and the countless anonymous others who have resisted, and perished in their millions.