China's Copenhagen Opportunity

I co-wrote this article last week. The final article was in Chinese so hopefully sounded prettier and not so choppy.

Rising Power

“Today, 2 April 2009,” declared the Observer’s Timothy Garton Ash on the opening day of the G-20 summit in London, “may yet be marked as the day on which, through the catalyst of a global economic crisis, China definitively emerged as a 21st-century world power.” Garton Ash was not alone in seeing China as a world power. The Wall Street Journal contended that, “China sent a strong signal with its active role in last week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies: The country's leaders intend to play a greater part in shaping the global economy.” Even the seating arrangement at the G-20 revealed China’s new position in the world: Hu Jintao was right next to the summit's host, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK.

Months before the G-20 confirmed China’s new international standing, Zbigniew Brzezinzski, former US Secretary of State, proposed the formation of a G2—a group of the US and China that would be the major global decision-making body for the 21^st Century. With some economists predicting that China will overtake a crumbling Japan in 2012 as the world’s second-largest economy, it is probable that this bilateral relationship will be the most important one for the next several decades at least.

Not Quite There Yet

But despite its new-found economic status, China is still not a major player in many global issues, and it is not valued in its own neighborhood, East and Southeast Asia. A recent study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs indicated that despite growing public support, China still falls behind Japan and the US in terms of political, economic and cultural appeal among six East and Southeast Asian nations. According to David Shambaugh, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University in DC, “[China] has no global military reach, its soft power is limited, and its diplomatic reach, while now global, is still limited in areas such as the Middle East and Latin America.”

More unsettling were the results of a recent University of Maryland and BBC Globescan poll of mainly Western countries’ attitudes toward China. Only 39% of the people polled in all 21 countries thought that China’s influence on the world was positive. (The US only had a 40% positive rating, Japan had 57% and Russia 30%.) This perception is mainly the result of misunderstandings about issues like Tibet and the Chinese government’s control of society, and a general fear of an unknown, rising power. Many other people in countries like Japan or Germany may resent being replaced as economic leaders.

For the most part, this perception problem is simply that—a problem with the way others see China and not necessarily a problem with China itself. But if China does not make attempts to bolster its image, especially in Western countries (where it received the lowest support) upon which its export industry relies heavily, dealings with these countries will become strained. The unpopularity of the Bush administration, due to the president's cavalier attitude on issues like Iraq and the Kyoto Accords, sapped America’s soft power and many leaders who sided with Bush have since been voted out of office. China could avoid Bush’s mistakes this year.

Progress on Pollution?

Ten years after the Kyoto accords failed at achieving a global consensus on environmental protection, many view the Copenhagen Conference this December as the last chance to stop global warming. “After eight years of U.S. inaction on climate change,” wrote the Guardian, “American leadership offers the only hope of success.” The Guardian is not alone in its desperate-sounding anticipation of Copenhagen. Dozens of magazines and newspapers and governments are also pinning their hopes on the new Obama administration.

But are they looking on the wrong side of the Pacific? Two years ago, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote that without the cooperation of China and India, carbon emission-reduction efforts in the service-based economies of the West would be meaningless. In fact, those harmed by China’s pollution most are China’s people. The World Bank has estimated that 750,000 people, or 2.5 times the number of Chinese people who were murdered in the Rape of Nanjing, died from pollution-related causes in 2007.

China has already begun taking bold steps in reducing carbon and green-house gas emissions. China’s 11th Five Year Plan, from 2005 to 2010, has set a target of creating five gigawatts (GW) of wind generation capacity – meaning 28% growth annually. One of the world’s most extensive solar-lighting initiatives is currently being carried out in China’s remote western provinces where access to electricity is limited and people normally use coal, the dirtiest source of energy. The government has also implemented more strict emissions regulations on cars than the United States. Cities like Shanghai, where it’s incredibly expensive to buy a license-plate, don’t have as much car-related pollution as Los Angeles.

The private sector, with the help of government investment and subsidies, is also making massive contributions to environmental improvement throughout the country. Dalian East Energy Company invented technology that not only reduces pollution from cement factories; it can convert the excess pollution into energy, further reducing the consumption of coal. In Changsha, Broad Air-conditioning, a multi-billion dollar company, has pioneered technology that cools the indoors without releasing the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons that traditional units spew. And just last fall, Warren Buffet showed his faith in the future of a green China by investing over 200 million dollars in BYD, a Chinese company that is producing fully battery-powered cars. Buyers of the car will be rewarded with an 8,800 USD government-paid subsidy. (The final price tag is still a cost-prohibitively high 22,000 USD.)

With these progressive initiatives, the government has shown the Chinese people that it is confronting pollution problems head-on. This December by leading the charge in Copenhagen, China has a unique opportunity to show this commitment to environmental protection to the world and, at the same time, to move beyond the moniker, ‘the world’s factory,’ and become one of the major players in the entire international system.