China US Relations Plummet With Copenhagen Climate Talks Snub
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22 December 2009. David Caploe, PhD, Chief Politcal Economist, EconomyWatch.com. The Copenhagen environmental talks ended in a weak, informal “agreement” that some called the end of the UN-based world ecological process that began in the early 1990s with the Rio de Janeiro meetings.[br]
22 December 2009. David Caploe, PhD, Chief Politcal Economist, EconomyWatch.com. The Copenhagen environmental talks ended in a weak, informal “agreement” that some called the end of the UN-based world ecological process that began in the early 1990s with the Rio de Janeiro meetings.[br]
22 December 2009. David Caploe, PhD, Chief Politcal Economist, EconomyWatch.com. The Copenhagen environmental talks ended in a weak, informal “agreement” that some called the end of the UN-based world ecological process that began in the early 1990s with the Rio de Janeiro meetings.[br]
The 12-paragraph final accord was not a binding pledge to begin taking action on global warming, but rather a statement of intention – a compromise claimed by its relatively few enthusiasts to be an essential, if flawed, step forward in dealing with a complex of global environmental problems.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to the conference run-up, let alone the evident snafus and disruptions – like the “walk out” last Monday of the “Group of 77” less-developed countries [somehow including China and India] – that marked its rocky duration.
In the midst of this generally dismaying sequence, there were, however, some significant events – the most important of which, unfortunately, bodes even worse for the global future than the generally disheartening results from the Danish capital.
This was the extraordinary blow-up between the US and China at the climactic moment of negotiations, involving both Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Barack Obama personally – an incident that indicates a rocky road ahead for US / China relations, which clearly constitute the single most important bilateral relationship in the world.[br]
Since I’m an American, let me reiterate from the start that I consider US complaints about China’s “under-valued” yuan / RMB to be absolute nonsense: as we have pointed out here many times, US products rarely compete directly with Chinese exports, whether in American or third-country markets – although, as we have also noted, Third World countries, such as those in ASEAN [the South East Asian countries], that DO compete head-on with China, might have more legitimate reason to be unhappy.
Nor do I give much credence to US charges of “dumping” against Chinese manufacturers of such key industrial components as steel, where China has as much EXCESS capacity as almost the entire production of former global leaders like South Korea – such is a standard feature of countries rapidly advancing up the “heavy manufacturing product life cycle,” which was the case for both Korea and Japan just a few decades ago.
And regular readers of this site are similarly aware of my own disappointment with Barack Obama, above all, his seemingly chronic reliance on middlemen to achieve his alleged policy goals – an approach we have argued is fast making him irrelevant to the rapidly deteriorating political economic scene in the US.
All this said, even we find the actions of Mr. Wen a bit shocking, whose blatant disrespect for Mr. Obama during the Copenhagen meeting would be disturbing coming from any leader, but especially one whose culture places such a significant emphasis on face.
While not totally surprising given previous friction between the two countries about both general economic and specifically environmental issues, the two leaders had had a positive summit meeting last month in Beijing, and had also made progress on sharing clean energy technology, including discussions between environmental officials of both countries about how to measure accurately greenhouse gas emissions
.
But things began to fall apart on Thanksgiving Day, when China said it would enforce with its own domestic law – a definite variance from the general “global standards and enforcement” approach of the whole UN-based process – pollution reduction targets that US officials privately considered too low in the first place.
In response, they re-iterated that some form of international monitoring would be required, raising doubt about the integrity of the reporting methods China proposed to use. Not unexpectedly, China cast the issue as one of national sovereignty, and rejected the use of an external verification approach.
All these tensions boiled over in Copenhagen on Friday, when President Obama arrived at the meetings, unfolding in a melodramatic fashion that would be almost comic, if the issues involved weren’t so serious, as recounted by the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin and John Broder, supported by Helene Cooper, Elisabeth Rosenthal, Tom Zeller Jr. and James Kanter.
[quote]Twice during the day, Mr. Wen sent an underling to represent him at the meetings with Mr. Obama. To make things worse, each time it was a lower-level official.
It was bad enough, said officials, describing the atmosphere later, that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei was sitting at the table with President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other world leaders.
But Friday afternoon, after what administration officials believed had been a constructive one-on-one meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen, the Chinese premier sent his special representative on climate change negotiations, Yu Qingtai, to a meeting of the leaders of major countries, including Mr. Obama.
The White House made a point of noting the snub in a statement to reporters. Mr. Obama, for his part, said to his staff: “I don’t want to mess around with this anymore. I want to talk to Wen,” according to an aide.
The White House set up an evening meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen. It also set up a separate meeting with Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, [whose] approval was needed to seal any climate deal.
Shortly before the appointed time of the meeting with Mr. Wen, Denis McDonough, the national security council chief of staff, and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, arrived and were startled to find the Chinese prime minister already meeting with the leaders of the three other countries.
They alerted Mr. Obama and he rushed down to the site of the meeting.
“Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?” Mr. Obama called from the doorway. “Are you ready?”
Despite its tense start, the meeting led to an accord that settled a number of issues, including a compromise on wording on the issue of monitoring and verification that satisfied Mr. Wen.
[/quote]The best we can hope is this sort of intentional disrespect isn’t a general indicator of a new Chinese attitude towards either the world in general or the US in particular, but is limited to environmental issues –although, given the economic importance of pollution as China grows, that would itself be extremely short-sighted.
At worst, however, a policy of deliberate personal insult towards the President of the United States and other world leaders – however much the former may have called it on himself by policies making him irrelevant in his own country –is NOT a good sign from a nation that MUST have positive relations with the US for any hope of global stability generally, and especially during a time of rampant economic insecurity worldwide.
Coming from the US, I am frequently annoyed by the tendency of my fellow Americans to blame other nations for economic problems that are manifestly their own creation, and for which they don’t want to take responsibility.
And, unlike Japan, whose own impenetrability often leads to misunderstanding foreign societies, China’s more open culture gives them a much clearer handle on what is happening in other countries – which means they are possibly reading EconomyWatch.com and other English language websites, and understand how significantly Obama has weakened his own domestic political position.
Nevertheless, it would be wise to eschew the self-defeating short-term time perspective so often adopted by Americans, and remember that, whatever the daily fluctuations, there is no choice for the long-term health and stability of China AND the rest of the world except to have consistent / strong / and positive relations with their inevitable and invaluable partner for decades to come – the United States.
David Caploe PhD
Chief Political Economist
EconomyWatch.com
