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China calls for cooperation in fight against climate change
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is on his second visit to China this year, hoping to promote China-US cooperation on the climate issue. As the climate issue is a common concern of all mankind, Beijing and Washington jointly promoting the full implementation of the Paris Agreement benefits not only the two countries, but also the entire world.
However, US expectations - separating the cooperation on climate issue from the entire China-US ties, giving such joint work a special hype in disregard of the overwhelming complexity of other aspects of the bilateral relationship, making the Joe Biden administration look righteous and reasonable through the lens of climate cooperation, helping the administration win more points politically - seem quite absurd.
The overall US policy toward China has been so wicked. It has imposed a whole-of-government and wide-scale crackdown on China. Then the US suddenly put on a friendly face on the climate issue, inviting China to cooperate with it as if nothing has ever happened. The US wishes to ask China to make new concessions that go beyond the latter's own promises to coordinate US leadership. As Chinese people often ask, "What on earth are you talking about?"
The US strategic containment against China has severely divided the world and threatened China's long-term security. Objectively speaking, the US has destroyed the foundation for the world to do something great together. The COVID-19 pandemic is surging across the world but countries are acting in their own ways. This is the result of political antagonism in today's world.
The US is, on the one hand, making the utmost effort to divide the world, while on the other, building a drawbridge over the huge gap among the major powers. The rope of the drawbridge is held in Washington's hand. The US lowers the drawbridge when it needs it, and raises it up when it doesn't need it any more. It shows Washington's unscrupulous desire to control the world. Is there any reason for China to let the US get whatever it wants?
China and the US can work together on the climate issue and carry out necessary cooperation. But it is obviously hard for the entire Chinese society to accept placing such cooperation in the arrogant logic of the US' China policy of "competition, cooperation, and confrontation," or letting the US arbitrarily define the political implications of China-US cooperation on the climate issue. The US lacks both morality and justice to do so, and it lacks a compelling force to ask China to offer what the US wants.
Cooperation must be mutually beneficial. This is both the principle of sticking to the facts and a strategic morality. If the US continues its comprehensive containment of China, and keeps pushing the hostility between the two countries, it will create constant pollution in the space for bilateral cooperation. This is common sense and conventional wisdom. Many of the US policies toward China are zero-sum, leaving the world a strong impression that the US would not be satisfied until it suffocates China's development. Under such circumstances, Chinese society's willingness to cooperate with the US can hardly be immune to the impact of vigilance against the US.
Washington should not have thought that showing a little willingness toward cooperation in its comprehensive containment of Beijing is "mercy" to China. If they really think that way, they will find no grateful Chinese.
When it comes to climate, China believes that cooperation is necessary, as stated earlier. But if the cooperation has other extended meanings aimed at boosting Washington's political gains, such cooperation must be considered in the big picture of China-US ties. As China is a powerful major country, it has unique influence in many international affairs around the globe. No matter in which field the US hopes to cooperate with China and at the same time promote the US benefits, such joint work must be linked with the entire China-US relationship.
China wants to improve its ties with the US, but China will not do everything to please the US. The major power relationship between China and the US should be on an equal footing and follow the basic principle of mutual respect. If the US ever attempts to treat China forcefully in this logic - asking China to keep putting up good shows, ones that are thought good enough to satisfy the US, then the US returns the favor by relaxing tensions - it is totally wrong. This is not the way the Chinese people like to deal with other countries, and we do not want such "improvement" in China-US relations at all.
Botched Afghan retreat reveals an America struggling to contain China
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Unable to better China in positive competition and with military options unfeasible, the US can only fall back on the ‘moral high ground’. But in its hasty Afghan withdrawal, to focus on China, the US risks losing even this - Dr. Zhengxu Wang
Whether America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of US world hegemony remains to be seen. President Joe Biden
has made it very clear that the United States withdrew to concentrate more on containing China’s rise – that is, extending its hegemony in a more effective and focused manner.
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The US positions its relations with China within a “competition, cooperation and confrontation” formula. But as China’s vice-foreign minister, Xie Feng, said during talks with his US counterpart in Tianjin last month, the US is going all out to confront and contain China while demanding its cooperation whenever needed.
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Unsurprisingly, when the Taliban swiftly took power in the Afghan capital of Kabul, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately called on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to help with the situation.
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China blames the US for thinking only about its own concerns: how can the US set out to harm or undermine China, and still demand its cooperation?
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The US has fallen into a deep predicament in the face of a booming China. The American policy circle and social elite realise that, in many social, economic and governance areas – such as containing Covid-19, developing infrastructure, industrialisation, transiting to sustainable energy, achieving carbon neutrality and moving up to 5G communications – the US is either at a disadvantage or has no possibility of suppressing China right now.
https://youtu.be/LbRXFpkzlZs
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US President Joe Biden vows China “will not win this race” amid electric vehicle rivalry
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Back in April, Blinken admitted that the US had fallen behind China in the field of clean energy. In May, Biden said that while China’s annual research and development investment had risen from ninth in the world to first, the US had dropped from first to eighth.
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These figures proved inaccurate, but Biden’s words reflect American leaders’ anxiety about being surpassed by China in science and technology.
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Positive competition should be about substantially improving living standards and solving the problems facing humanity. Yet America’s real advantage over China boils down to its military power.
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But, as the Saigon flashback during the withdrawal from Kabul shows, America’s ability even to achieve its goals with military power is also very limited.
https://youtu.be/v87fC61K5BY
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Former British prime minister Tony Blair criticises US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Former British prime minister Tony Blair criticises US withdrawal from Afghanistan
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Since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the US seems to have entered an era in which it relied on military power to act unilaterally and arbitrarily in the world. The bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 by a US-led Nato force can be said to be a textbook case of the US exercising military power at will.
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The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan went one step further. Ostensibly in retaliation for the September 11 attacks, it was in fact part of plans by some in the US to overthrow and rebuild regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran, one by one.
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This has been disastrous for the countries and the world at large. In Afghanistan, more than 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in the war, with another 60,000 injured and millions forced to flee as refugees.
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The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of an estimated 200,000 civilians or more – and a legacy of some 25 million landmines. The long-standing Syrian civil war, whose democratic forces were supported by the US, has left about 6 million Syrians displaced – the largest refugee crisis today.
https://youtu.be/fUSPxeXUs_8
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‘I'm as old as the revolution’, Syrian boy turns 10 as nation marks decade of civil war
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But when the US comes up against another strong military power, it cannot choose the military option. This was seen in US inaction over Russian military operations against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.
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Similarly, the US needs to avoid direct military conflict with China. While Beijing will not initiate military action, Washington would lose more than it could gain if it chose to go to war over Taiwan. Indeed, Beijing’s increasing defence capabilities are proving a deterrent for US military action against China and in the Asia-Pacific as a whole.
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Even with the US gone from Afghanistan, the world still needs to ensure America only uses its military power for national defence.
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Falling behind China in many spheres of competition, and with military options unfeasible, the US is left with its “moral high ground”. Hence, the Biden administration’s attempts to build an ideological alliance based on so-called human rights and democratic values.
https://youtu.be/AqlhWcV5pjs
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US warns American companies about operating in Hong Kong, sanctions 7 Chinese officials
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The main aim of such an alliance is to attack China over democracy and minority rights in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan. But, in practice, such pressure is difficult to exert. In a world where information about the real situation in China is freely available to the larger world, it is impossible to pull the wool over people’s eyes all the time.
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Moreover, China has recently launched powerful counter-attacks against the US and other Western countries, exposing their ingrained racism and their dark histories of colonialism and genocide.
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In any case, should the US choose to compete negatively with China – that is, not by improving its capabilities, setting a better example for the world, and providing more public goods, but instead by weakening, attacking and containing China to maintain its advantage – it will lose its global audience.
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Afghanistan is an object lesson in how to ‘unbuild’ a country 16 Aug 2021
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Over time, more countries and people will recognise America’s hypocrisy, double standards and weakness. The hurried retreat from Afghanistan has been costly in these terms for the US. Any perceived hypocrisy, or double standards in ideology and values will only damage America’s global leadership.
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This is the “China dilemma” the US faces today – it finds itself losing in areas of positive competition, yet by resorting to negative competition, it can only harm itself.
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For its part, China has made it clear it does not seek to defeat the US or overthrow the world order. To escape its China dilemma, the US needs to recognise the right of the Chinese people to live a better life, to modernise society, and to enjoy a safe and stable international environment.
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Dr Zhengxu Wang who is distinguished professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University. Previously he served as senior fellow and acting director at the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, as well as research fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore.
China in top spot for research
BEIJING: China has overtaken the United States for the first time in terms of the average number of high-quality scientific papers produced from 2017 to 2019, according to a report by a Japanese government-linked institute this month.
High-quality papers typically refer to the top 10% of the most cited scientific papers in their respective field.
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China topped the global ranking with an average of 40,219 such papers published annually in the three-year period, followed by the US with 37,124, and the United Kingdom with 8,687, according to Japanese Science and Technology Indicators 2021.
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The report has been published annually since 1991 by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, which is affiliated with Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Each report is based on the three-year period that ended two years before.
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The latest report found that US papers performed well in fields such as clinical medicine, basic life sciences, physics and geosciences from 2017 to 2019, while Chinese papers were most cited in the fields of materials science, chemistry, engineering, and computer sciences and mathematics.
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In the 1990s, China used to rank 10th or lower among major science nations in the number of high-quality scientific papers, the report said.
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However, it saw significant improvement in the following years, reaching second place globally by the late 2000s and holding onto that position until rising to the top between 2017 and 2019.
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Two factors that have contributed to China’s rapid rise in science and technology output are its massive talent pool and research budget. In 2019, China had around 4.86 million full-time research and development personnel and research expenditure of over 2.2 trillion yuan, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
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China has also seen a steady rise in the annual number of new doctoral degree holders, reaching around 61,000 in 2019. That was second to the US, which had 90,000 new PhD recipients that year, the report said.
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A more prestigious category is called highly-cited papers, which are studies that performed in the top 1% based on the number of citations received, according to Web of Science, a global academic literature and citation database.
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From 2017 to 2019, the US published 4,413 highly-cited papers annually within the three-year period, followed by China with 4,046 and the UK with 970, the report said. — China Daily/ANN
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman would seek to show China on her upcoming visit to the country "what responsible and healthy competition can look like." He also noted that the US wanted to ensure there were "guardrails" in the relationship and that competition did not spill over into conflict.
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From our perspective, there's nothing wrong with the literal meaning of these words. China does not want competition to spill over into conflict as well. It would be good for both countries and the world if the two sides could work together to set up "guardrails" to prevent the kind of escalation that is widely feared.
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Yet, experience suggests that Washington often says one thing and does another, using beautiful concepts as their brand of bullying and forcefully reshaping the meaning of those concepts. For example, Washington often talks about "rules," but the world has seen the US consistently commit the most brutal violations of the rules on which the United Nations system is based. The rules they talk about are actually a framework for protecting the interests of the US and its major allies. They are also a behavioral norm to force other countries to maximize those interests.
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If China and the US want to set up "guardrails" between their competition, they must follow the principle of equality and mutual benefit and follow the spirit of the UN Charter. Washington must not unilaterally set boundaries for China's behavior, nor can it advocate its interests to harm China's core interests even more.
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Such "guardrails" would be a unilateral guardrail for the US but a prison circled by a wire fence for China. If Sherman had come to China with such a purpose, the Deputy Secretary's trip would probably have achieved little more than a taste of Tianjin's delicious steamed stuffed bun.
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The "guardrails" between China and the US to prevent conflicts must include the following contents:
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First, the US should stop interfering in China's internal affairs, abandon its obsession with "transforming China" and refrain from narcissism with the outward aggression of American values. It is the fundamental principle for building a security wall between major countries to respect each other and refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs.
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Second, the US military should not press closer to China's core interests, but should keep the necessary distance. Especially in the Taiwan Straits, the US should not give secessionists in the island of Taiwan a sense of military dependence and encourage them to stir up the tension. That would be very dangerous. In the South China Sea, the US cannot directly intervene in disputes. If it tries to influence the direction of the situation in the South China Sea through military pressure, it will lead to a high risk of conflict.
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Third, the US must not turn its competition with China into an aggressive suppression of China's development. Its attempts to gang up allies to keep China out of the world's major supply chains will eventually lead to a fundamental conflict with China if they go any further. A conflict like that would produce a wide divergence, destabilizing and creating long-term uncertainty in international relations, and ultimately shaping China and the US as life-and-death strategic enemies.
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In general, the US cannot attempt to attack China's system, or divide China, or block its development path. These are the foundations of the "guardrails" between the two countries. If the US breaks these three rules, it is proactively attacking China, not competing with it. And China will fight back no matter the cost.
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So, the US needs to have basic honesty. It should not try to deceive itself. For example, if the authorities on the island of Taiwan under Washington's support or instigation cross the redline of "independence" - the People's Liberation Army will definitely stop it with force. If the US intervenes, a military confrontation between China and the US will take place.
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China has no intention to confront the US, but it is a national principle for China to defend its core interests. The US can't unilaterally define the "guardrails" between the two countries out of its own interests, because they need to be defined by both China and the US to advance the interests of both countries. The US has extensive experience in international relations, and hopefully, Washington will not be confused about the core problem of how to engage in competition, instead of conflict, with Beijing.
Results of Sherman’s China visit depend on US attitude
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will visit North China's Tianjin from July 25 to 26, a visit arranged after the US proposal to exchange views on China-US relations, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry late Wednesday night. Sherman is scheduled to visit Japan, South Korea and Mongolia from July 18 to 25. Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is leaving for his trip to Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines on Friday.
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This time, the US is taking the initiative in proposing exchange of views on China-US relations. This shows that the Biden administration has made some progress in evaluating its China policy and may begin to implement these policies next.
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Washington is eager to communicate with Beijing because it is increasingly aware of the need to cooperate with China on many issues.
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The US may also want to use Sherman's visit to pressure China on issues such as Xinjiang, the Taiwan Straits, and South China Sea.
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US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a briefing on Tuesday that the US will engage with China "when it's in our interests to do so, and we do remain interested in doing so in a practical, substantive and direct manner." During Sherman's talks with her Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Tokyo on Wednesday, the three sides agreed that they oppose "any unilateral attempts to change the status quo" in the East China Sea and the Taiwan Straits.
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This is a typical feature of the US' current China policy. "Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be," as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March.
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Despite pressuring China on Xinjiang, the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea, Washington may also believe it won't affect pragmatic cooperation with Beijing in some other areas.
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However, China will make its principles clear during Sherman's upcoming visit. China focuses on cooperation, controls competition, and avoids confrontation in handling China-US relations.
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During the recent weeks, Washington has intensified its blame on China in terms of the so-called massive cyberattack. It has also issued a blanket warning to US firms about the risks of doing business in Hong Kong, and passed a bill that would ban all goods from or made in Xinjiang unless importers can prove they weren't made with "forced labor." We must show the US that China firmly safeguards its sovereignty, security and development. We firmly oppose the US' interfering in China's internal affairs and harming our national interests. These are all basic principles that China will make clear.
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During Sherman's visit, China and the US may have practical discussions on some specific issues including climate change, Afghanistan, Iran and improving the working environment of diplomatic personnel and institutions in the two countries. China will make a very thorough clarification on its principles, while also leaving some room for China-US cooperation on specific issues.
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Defense Secretary Austin previewed his Southeast Asian trip on Wednesday, saying that he will, "make clear where we stand on some unhelpful and unfounded claims by China in the South China Sea." Clearly, the South China Sea will be a key point of his trip. Vietnam and the Philippines are two countries that Washington wants to rope in the most in terms of the South China Sea issue.
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Together with Sherman's Asia tour, the US aims at showing Asian countries that it will continue attaching importance to the region, and making it clear to China that it will carry on the Indo-Pacific Strategy to pressure China.
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After Chinese top diplomats resolutely refuted the US' rude manners during Alaska talks in March, the two countries almost haven't had any face-to-face senior-level dialogues since. The US Department of State said Sherman's visit is "part of ongoing US efforts to hold candid exchanges" with China in order to "advance US interests and values and to responsibly manage the relationship."
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Nonetheless, the US' attitude won't be different from that during Alaska talks. Strategic competition with China is still the keynote of US' China policy. This won't change. Thus, the US will not stop interference in China's internal affairs, and will continue piling pressure on Xinjiang and other issues.
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The "candid exchanges" are possible if the two sides exchange views frankly. As for "responsibly managing the relationship," it may be hard to do. This will depend on whether Washington plans to properly handle its ties with Beijing. If Washington's China policy is dominated by the use of pressure and rhetoric of competition, then relations between the two countries will only worsen.
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After White House Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell said in early July that China and the US can "coexist in peace," Washington is now proactively seeking dialogue with Beijing. But this does not necessarily mean Washington is becoming more rational toward Beijing. For example, Campbell said, "We do not support Taiwan independence," yet the US has sent more military aircraft to the island. Similarly, the US is calling for dialogue while it is still trying to impose more pressure on China.
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On many issues, Washington says one thing and does another, making it unreliable.
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The article was compiled by Global Times reporter Li Qingqing based on an interview with Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
Climate could be ‘competition hot spot’ due to US uncertainty
During a US-led global climate summit in which Washington seeks to shore up global leadership on the issue, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated China's goal of reaching carbon neutrality in 2060, a goal that is hailed by analysts as most ambitious in terms of time duration compared with developed countries; and the president's proposal of "jointly building a community for man and nature" was praised by observers as "putting up a new rule for human being's new civilization."
Addressing the summit, Xi said from Beijing via video link that in the face of unprecedented difficulties in global environmental governance, the international community must take unprecedented ambitions and actions, bravely shoulder responsibilities, and work together to build a community for man and nature.
US President Joe Biden pledged in his opening remarks at the summit to cut US greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, a target that would nearly double America's previous commitment when signing the Paris Agreement, which was to reduce its emissions about 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
By inviting leaders of some 40 state leaders to attend the summit and announcing an unbinding yet ambitious goal, Biden eyed a high-profile comeback for the US in the global climate framework, after four years of the Trump administration's unvarnished climate denial landed a heavy blow to international efforts to combat climate change, observers said.
China's ambition, devotion
Xi said at the summit that China welcomes the US coming back to the multilateral governing process on climate issues, and China and the US just issued a joint statement on responding to the climate crisis. He also urged countries to stick to their promises, instead of walking back against their commitment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India made no new commitment. Only US allies, including Canada and Japan, announced their new goal in climate change. Canada vowed to cut its greenhouse emissions by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, compared with its previous target of a 30 percent emissions reduction in the same time frame.
Some Western media, including the Associated Press, reported previously that Biden's proposal of a new climate goal is to prod countries to further cut their emissions. Yet Chinese climate observers lashed out at such intention, saying that being the country investing the highest in clean energy, China is doing its utmost to curb emissions; and its determination in this area won't be pressured by countries with about-faces on this issue.
Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy on climate change, said at a press conference held after Xi's speech that although China did not put forward a specific plan for 2030, China's current goal is very ambitious.
The EU's per capita carbon dioxide emissions reached 7.9 tons from 1990 to 1992 when the bloc realized carbon peaking, and the figure was 19.9 tons for the US when its carbon emissions peaked in 2007, said Xie, noting China's carbon dioxide emissions per capita will be 7.2 to 7.5 tons when its emission peaks in 2030, far below that of the US.
He said that China will realize its goals set previously, and is making plans and investments. "China made an ambitious plan and will stick to its word… Its ambition needs not be questioned," said the envoy.
"China would not bring forward new goals, but China will gradually detail its existing goals, such as the coal industry reaching the carbon emissions peak earlier," Li Junfeng, former director general of China's National Center of Climate Change Strategy Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, told the Global Times on Thursday.
China will include carbon emissions peak and carbon neutrality into the country's whole layout of building an eco-civilization, and is working on plans of carbon emissions peak, said Xi.
In the post-industrial era, tackling the climate issue also means changing the way of thinking and the way of production as well as the way of life. It's an ambitious plan for China as the country has to catch up and even exceed other developed countries in reaching the goals that developed countries took many years to reach, Wang Yiwei, director of the institute of international affairs at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Thursday.
According to Wang, China would only spend 30 years to reach the carbon emissions peak to carbon neutrality as the largest developing country with the largest population. "China is committed to achieving the goals which will greatly contribute to the global fight against climate change, inspiring more developing countries to make utmost efforts."
During the summit, Xi also put forward a six-point proposal on building a community of life for man and nature. To build such a community, we must be committed to harmony between man and nature, green development, systemic governance, a people-centered approach, multilateralism, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, Xi said.
Xi's proposal of the term sets a new rule for human civilization, and if the biggest developing country can realize such goal, China will galvanize other developing countries to follow suit. By doing this, China is also meant to serve as a bridge between developed and developing countries, which is to infuse the green notion and technology used in developed countries to third world countries.
Cooperation or contest?
By enticing leaders to participate in the summit, the US, which had hindered global climate efforts, aims to shore up leadership in the field and demonstrate its determination by upping the ante of its emissions goal, Yang Fuqiang, a research fellow at Peking University's Research Institute for Energy, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Yet the expert said the US' seemingly ambitious yet unbinding promise is "symbolic." "The US has let its emissions rise unrestrained after its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Now, it is setting a target compared with the start point, but who is going to fix the few year's gap left by the US, and why does Washington still believe it has the legitimacy to prod other countries to set an ambitious goal after its flip-flop has diminished global efforts in fighting climate change?"
The US Environmental Protection Agency's February data shows the country's carbon emissions rose during the first three years after former US president Donald Trump decided to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.
The country's total emissions in 2019 were still 121 MMt above where they were in 2017 when Trump took office, marking the highest level of carbon pollution the US generated in five years.
Unlike China, which has a smooth and efficient system of implementing orders from above, Biden's climate plan is facing a filibuster dilemma, mostly from Republicans who oppose his plan, and will eventually cripple the US president's plan of pushing forward his clean energy project, Li said.
The US also targeted the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), trying to throw mud at China's efforts in tackling global warming. While campaigning for the US presidency, Biden criticized China for financing dirty fossil fuel projects around the world through the BRI - and essentially "outsourcing" Chinese carbon pollution to other countries.
"Developing countries in the BRI prioritize boosting the economy, which results in large amounts of carbon emissions. But without the help from China's technology and capital, the emissions will be larger than the current level," said Yang.
Xi also vowed at the summit to prioritize ecological civilization into the BRI. China has launched a green action proposal and is taking green infrastructure, energy, transportation, finance and a slew of other green measures to benefit people of BRI countries.
China has worked together with BRI countries to elevate their ability to cope with climate change, and has build low-carbon demonstration areas with countries such as Cambodia and Laos.
In contrast, the US has invested large amounts of money to support overseas fossil fuel projects. US public finance for overseas fossil fuel projects averaged more than $4 billion annually over the past decade, at times exceeding $10 billion in a single year, according to Washington-based Oil Change International, an advocacy group opposing fossil fuels.
Some Western media and organizations also pressured China to further eliminate emissions, saying China's energy-related carbon emissions accounted for about 28.8 percent, while the US accounted for 14 percent.
Yang called such comparison "oversimplified." "We have to take into account historical emissions since the industrial revolution; countries' carbon dioxide emissions per capita and talk of realizing peak carbon emissions," Yang said.
The US has emitted more carbon dioxide than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tons since 1751, it is responsible for 25 percent of the historical emissions; that is twice more than China, according to data portal Our World in Data.
From realizing peak carbon emissions to carbon neutrality, it will take China 30 years, but the US would take 43 years for the same goal. Developed countries had caused the bulk of the historical accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Climate change has been the hot spot for countries to underscore global governance, as well as to showcase national image. It's not a bad thing that the US seeks to undertake leadership, yet its about-faces have left severe consequences, Yuan Zheng, deputy director and senior fellow of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday. He noted that the US government hopes to use the climate issue to serve its own strategic goals, but it would be very hard for it to completely lead other countries of great influence, including China, France and Germany.
The US is "walking against the deal at will, and wants to lead others when it's back." This has deeply hurt other countries. A mere summit is impossible to fix its image, according to Yuan.
Li Haidong, from the China Foreign Affairs University, pointed out that US climate policy lacks continuity. Biden's policy is likely to be thwarted by Republicans when the latter takes office. "It is difficult for the climate issue to be the long-term glue of China-US cooperation."
He said that as the US eyes climate issues to shoulder global leadership, the topic may become a target of strategic competition between the US with China and Russia. "So in the long run, the climate issue may be the hot spot for China-US competition."
Xinjiang PV enterprise refutes unfounded Bloomberg report on irresponsible accusation of ‘forced labor’, plots ‘industry stifling’ in Xinjiang, this time targets solar energy industry - Global Times
First it was cotton; now it's Xinjiang's solar panels that are being targeted. Both are pillar industries of Xinjiang in Northwest China, and they have become the target of what appears to be a malicious campaign launched by Western anti-China forces to destroy Xinjiang's rapidly ascending economy and ultimately obstruct the development of China.
These forces behind the campaign position themselves as saviors and claim to counter a "genocide" in Xinjiang, but what they are doing is essentially attempting to wipe out the industries and the bread and butter of over 25 million people in Xinjiang, locals, businesses and experts said.
Unlike the campaign against Xinjiang's cotton, which was led by political forces, the latest campaign against the photovoltaic (PV) industry appears to be pushed by forces within the PV industry that have been overwhelmed by Chinese firms, including those in Xinjiang, for years, in an apparent ill attempt to use politics to crack down on what they can't compete with in the market, analysts pointed out. Such a shift in trend poses a serious threat for other industries in Xinjiang and around the country and demands forceful countermeasures, they said.
As the debate on the so-called forced labor issue in the Chinese solar energy industry has been hyped up lately following the West's groundless smearing on Xinjiang cotton, Chinese experts and solar energy insiders warned that the US is setting a trap and a pattern, step by step, to destroy Xinjiang's competitive industries, even with an aim to bring about the collapse of Xinjiang's economy and local people's livelihood.
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Once finding the approach of giving a bad name to the Chinese industry useful by citing "human rights abuses" or "forced labor," capital and interest groups may copy the smearing and boycott approach to stifle Xinjiang's industries, experts warned.
The Global Times interviewed a local polysilicon giant and found that the so-called forced labor in the region's PV industry is simply another lie created by certain media outlets, US trade groups and politicians.
"The workers from ethnic minority groups are mainly hired online, from universities and colleges, talent markets and by employee referrals. They enjoy paid annual leave, home visits with subsidies, wedding cash gifts, year-end bonuses and holiday gifts," Zhang Longgen, deputy chairman of Xinjiang Daqo, one of the four major Chinese polysilicon manufacturers, told the Global Times, denying any employment from Xinjiang's vocational education and training centers as reported by Bloomberg, the New York Times, POLITICO and so on.
Xinjiang Daqo's production accounted for around 15 percent of the global market share in 2020. "Silicon wafer producers are the customers of polysilicon. Around 97 percent of the global silicon wafers are made in China. All our products are sold in China," Zhang said.
"The ridiculous thing is that the US forcibly distorts facts and smears all the good things we have done that benefited the ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang," Zhang said.
By doing so, the US would strike a blow to China's, even the world's, solar energy sector and hurt the interests of ethnic groups in Xinjiang, he said.
At Xinjiang Daqo, 18 out of 1,934 workers are from ethnic minority groups. The average monthly salary at Xinjiang Daqo is 7,300 yuan ($1,118), compared with the average monthly salary of 6,617 yuan in Xinjiang's non-private sector and 3,825 yuan in the private sector in 2019.
"The proportion of labor costs in our company is less than 7 percent, so polysilicon manufacturing is not a labor-intensive industry," Zhang pointed out.
Dismissing a Bloomberg report on Tuesday which said "there's no freedom to refuse to sign factory contracts" for workers in Xinjiang, Zhang said some Western media's reports on Xinjiang came out of the reporters' "fertile imagination."
"Forced labor is not only unethical but also illegal in China. We have examined our suppliers recently and found no behavior of 'forced labor,'" Zhang said, adding the company's employee turnover rate is less than 3 percent.
"Anyone who tries to put a label of 'forced labor' on the Chinese PV enterprise should show their evidence. For example, who is forced to work in which enterprise? Without giving any testimony, such a claim is very irresponsible," Zhang said.
In a Bloomberg report, it said "guards in brown camouflage ordered away would-be observers" at the Xinjiang Daqo facility. The company told the Global Times it has been always open for visitors, but the coronavirus reduced such activities in the past year. "Bloomberg contacted us before Spring Festival this year, but China's epidemic control and prevention was strict at that time. That's why we didn't host it.
Echoing Zhang, a 39-year-old ethnic Mongolian worker named Bajin, said the so-called forced labor has never existed in the factory since he came to work for the company in May 2011, and none of his friends have ever complained about being forced to work in Xinjiang.
"I work eight hours per day and get two days off per week. I feel workers from ethnic minority groups at our company can even get extra care from our supervisors. So the Western countries' smearing is intentional to disturb ethnic unity in Xinjiang as well as our country's fast development," Bajin told the Global Times.
"For people at my age in Xinjiang, we all long for a good life, by farming, working or running our own businesses to improve our life quality. 'Forced labor' doesn't exist," he said, adding he earns 9,000 yuan per month as a production safety management staff member.
Smearing campaign
Zhang said he had smelled the conspiracy in the air for months, as he noticed that the share price of the US-listed Daqo New Energy Corp, the parent company of Xinjiang Daqo, dive from $130 to the current $67, dropping by approximately 52 percent in just two months.
Another Chinese PV giant Jinko Solar also suffered from short selling at the US stock market.
"We expressed strong condemnation to the groundless and irresponsible media reports that turned things upside down," Zhang noted.
The pace interestingly is in line with a report released in a publication by consulting firm Horizon Advisory in January, which claimed that "forced labor" is being used in the Chinese PV supply chain.
On top of that, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the US national trade group, urged its members to move their supply chains out of Xinjiang. More than 170 companies have signed a nonbinding pledge to avoid the so-called forced labor.
Xinjiang produces around 45 percent of the world's polysilicon supply - a type of upstream raw material in the photovoltaic (PV) industry, according to Dai Yanling, a veteran PV practitioner in China. Requiring intensive energy, such material is largely churned out in places that have large amounts and cheap electricity, thermal power and PV energy. That made Xinjiang, Southwest China's Yunnan, as well as North China's Inner Mongolia appealing in polysilicon manufacturing. China accounts for more than 85 percent of the world's polysilicon supply.
"Polysilicon manufacturing is not a labor-intensive industry anymore. Labor costs are not a key factor," Dai said.
US Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and others introduced the so-called "Keep China Out of Solar Energy Act" at the end of March in quick succession, banning US federal funds from being used to buy solar panels from companies based in China.
It is clear that the US has a map to crack down on China's PV industry, as it first started from a trade group's instigation, then to a further upgrading by US politicians, and "the reason behind it is that China's rapid growth in the solar energy sector moved the cheese of US companies," Dai said.
Dai said that before 2010, the polysilicon used in global solar energy had been monopolized by US and German enterprises, which had profiteered Chinese PV firms by forcing the them to sign long-term contracts (some are 10 years) with them.
Over more than a decade after China ramped up efforts in developing the PV industry, the price of polysilicon has dropped from $400-500 per kilogram in foreign companies before 2010 to $20 per kilogram in Chinese companies now, the practitioner noted.
Even if the US is the place of origin of PV technologies, its current PV sector lags behind when compared with developed countries like Germany, Japan and developing countries like China. Such a situation worried the US PV practitioners, Dai added.
To beat down the Chinese PV industry, the US government has taken different actions, such as in 2012, the US Department of Commerce imposed levies of 31.14-249.96 percent anti-dumping duties on Chinese PV cells while China's growth in solar energy was forging ahead.
Global Times reporters also found out over the past two years that many US business and trade representatives have cited the PV industry as a "classic case" when talking about the China-US trade frictions.b
The duties and crackdown policies have not beaten down China's PV industry, which disappointed the US.
According to the SEIA, the US PV industry was at a standstill during the Trump administration, with its PV install capacity dropping in the first two years during his term of office. After the relevant taxation reducing policy, the PV industry recovered a little in the US.
The first thing pushed forward by the incumbent US President Joe Biden was to get back to the Paris Agreement and set strategic goals in the energy sector.
Analysts said that in addition to strengthening the efforts to combat climate change, his aim was also to catch up the pace in the PV sector with other countries and even regain an upper hand, as major countries around the world embrace a green future in front of the crisis of global warming and climate change.
What also concerned the US businessmen is the US' high dependency on China in the PV supply chain, as Chinese companies have both lower costs and technological superiority, particularly in large size silicon wafers and granular silicon.
According to a report by McKinsey & Co in 2018, China's PV industry competitiveness surpassed the US by a lot. Among the top 10 global PV modules enterprises in 2020, three came from China and only one came from the US.
Zhang also cited statistics from the China Photovoltaic Industry Association to prove the country's PV supply could make tremendous contributions to the world's renewable energy transformation: Chinese raw material of silicon accounts for 67 percent of global share, wafers 97 percent, solar cells 79 percent and PV modules 71 percent.
Workers
at a cotton textile factory in Aksu City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region, northwest China, March 29, 2021. (Photo/CGTN)
Destroying value chain
It looks like the tactics of the PV industry have some water splash.
In a list of questions regarding alleged "forced labor" in Xinjiang, several members of the Dutch parliament urged the Netherlands government to explain if it is aware that solar PV panels and other components imported from China may contain raw materials from Xinjiang, according to local media reports.
They also asked the government to explain the possible impact on Dutch and European renewable energy markets in such situation as imports of Xinjiang-produced solar modules would be suspended.
Regarding the previous action on Xinjiang cotton, and now the PV industry, which accounts for 80-90 percent of the world's PV modules supply, Chinese experts warned that other industries, such as mechanical and electrical products, electric power and petroleum, could also be the next targets, and the US government is trying to suffocate or even kill Xinjiang's outstanding industries, with the help of some other Western countries.
"It looks like the US wants Xinjiang's competitive industries to die out in the region, so far namely cotton and solar energy, but in fact, it is destroying China's participation in the global value chain," Wang Yao, a research fellow specializing in border areas at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
The exports of mechanical and electrical products in Xinjiang are also vibrant, and countries along the Belt and Road are the main buyers. In 2019, mechanical and electrical products championed the most popular exported goods in Xinjiang, with the export value hitting 33.79 billion yuan, accounting for 27 percent of the region's total exports.
Last but not least, they are copying the smearing approach on Xinjiang cotton onto the PV industry after the first trial was testified effective, Wang noted. "If so, China's PV sector may be kept out of the door by the US, even the world."
However, the tactics being used by US interest groups in slandering Xinjiang's PV sector is a little different from that for cotton. Unlike the crackdown on Xinjiang cotton which was initiated by politicians, the suppression of the PV sector began from companies and industry groups that initiated the accusation, then US politicians stepped in, showing the voluntary collusion between industrial capital and politicians in their mutual objective of cracking down on China's development, experts said.
Last year, amid the reports of alleged "forced labor," the US Fair Labor Association wrote a report on such a topic in January 2020. At that time, the Shanghai office of Switzerland-based Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) had examined cotton factories in Xinjiang and found no forced labor.
Clothing brands such as Adidas and H&M, which have cooperation with BCI, also conducted examinations in Xinjiang. H&M had stated that it found no clue of "forced labor" in factories in the Aksu Prefecture.
But on October 21, 2020, BCI announced on its website to cease all field-level activities in China's Xinjiang region.
Such a move was driven by pressure from outside, as well as other interests. Since member fees are the main financial source for BCI, brand members, including Nike, LEVIS, or GAP from the US, have a significant influence on BCI. The US Agency for International Development was once a council member.
After suffering pressure from multiple sources, including the US government, popular clothing brands declared they refused to source any cotton production from Xinjiang.
After seeing fruitful results of slandering Xinjiang cotton, the cards of Xinjiang human rights and "forced labor" might be a "master key" for the US to hit any industry of Xinjiang, Wang warned, saying electric power and petroleum are very likely to be the next targets.
"The choice of polysilicon is different from that of cotton, as the costs of cotton produced in China remain higher than that produced in the US, Brazil and Australia. That means, with the lower-cost advantage of PV products, this round of crackdown on Xinjiang polysilicon will not succeed," Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who closely follows China-US bilateral trade, told the Global Times on Friday.
Illustration: Stephen Case
Illustration: Chen Xia/GT
