In a remote address to the UN General Assembly, Chinese President XI Jinping struck a conciliatory note in contrast to US President Joe Biden often impassioned and assertive posture hours earlier, underlining the stress in US-China relations that have come into sharp focus this week as Biden announced the AUKUS partnership between Australia, UK and US that is clearly aimed at China. (see the dueling YouTubes).
While both presidents made veiled references obviously targeted at each other, with Biden reciting his now familiar thesis of foreign policy doctrine and Xi countering with the Chinese foreign policy orthodoxy of equality and mutual respect between countries, they both made a pass at addressing climate change.
While Biden repeated his now familiar pledge of American Leadership on Climate, Xi matched the pledge committing China to cease building coal power plants in foreign countries, until now a black mark in China’s environmental strategy at odds with their leadership in pv Solar, EV adoption and Wind.
Specifically, the inclusion of several coal plant projects in the Belt and Road initiative that focuses on building infrastructure in neighboring and developing countries was seen as a safety net for Chinese construction SREs with coal plant technology.
Instead, Xi committed to end coal projects and promote clean energy going forward although it is not yet clear what the impact would be on current coal projects under construction.
China can easily and more economically provide Wind or pv Solar on a shorter timelines, but in some cases it would have to convince client states to make this choice since they often have coal resources and mining economies they want to maintain just as the US, China and several European countries do with this legacy industry that is the primary source of power in many nations. This commits China to walk away from such projects.
However we slice this bread, it is a win for the environment as any new coal plant avoided and replaced with a clean energy alternative is good for the world, geopolitics be damned.
Rather than lard this post with a lot of quotes, here are some links for those inclined to dive deeper.
Dueling YouTubes | Biden v XI
Wednesday, Sep 22, 2021 · 3:21:48 PM +00:00 · koNko
I want to add one fine point of clarification. Why I used the word “Build” in my title is that is what Xi said. But to a non-Mandarin speaker, the environmental journalist Liu Hongqiao adds some detail in her quoted tweet below that might be helpful (start at the bottom/first tweet):
Thursday, Sep 23, 2021 · 2:52:50 AM +00:00 · koNko
I was on a Twitter Spaces discussion this morning sponsored by ChinaDialogue where several subject experts weighed in on this development and took questions. It was a good discussion where some of the questions raised by myself and others in the thread below were addressed. Since then, ChinaDialogue has published reactions by some of the participants in the call, so I link that below as well as some opinions from Boston University Global Development Policy Center commentators.
Having been a reader and occasional contributor to ChinaDialogue for some years, I can recommend this as a good source of news, commentary and criticism on the environmental policy and status quo in China, so I suggest to give these a read. Thanks.