Are China's Climate Commitments in a Post-Paris Agreement Sufficiently Ambitious?

In international climate change negotiations, China’s role is an issue of perennial concern. In particular, the lack of quantitative, absolute emissions commitments from China has been the focus. In line with changing domestic and international contexts, China is recalibrating its stance and strategy. Its participation in international climate change negotiations has evolved from playing a peripheral role to gradually moving to the centre. This article examines China’s stance and role in international climate change negotiations from a historical perspective. In so doing, the article discusses the evolution of international climate negotiations and China’s stance in the lead-up to and at the Paris conference. The focus is now turning to the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The article discusses post-Paris issues in the international context and in particular in China’s context. These affect the post Paris negotiations and hold the key to achieving desired outcomes.


Introduction
There is increasingly scientific evidence confirming man-made climate change and its resulting negative effects. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental 1 In Lima, the parties had been unable to agree on a proposed formal peer-review process by which parties would be invited to review one another's pledges and subsequently revise their own. The Lima Call for Climate Action does provide the conditions for such a process to take place informally outside the UNFCCC. be widely seen as playing a long-awaited, increasingly positive role in this complex process. Zhang (2000aZhang ( , 2000b envisioned that China could make a voluntary commitment to total greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP at some point around 2020 and that a combination of a targeted carbon intensity level with an emissions cap at the sector level would be the most stringent commitment that it could make around or beyond 2020. It was only just prior to the Copenhagen summit that China pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 relative to its 2005 levels. In its 12th five-year economic plan , the carbon intensity target was incorporated for the first time as a domestic commitment, with energy intensity required to be cut by 16% nationwide (10-18% across provinces) and carbon intensity by 17% nationwide (10-19.5% across provinces) relative to their 2010 levels.
In the lead-up to and at Copenhagen, China took the initiative to ally with India and other major developing countries, took full advantage of being the world's largest carbon emitter, and attempted to secure a deal to its advantage. It is widely reported that China walked away "happy," but doing so came at a high price. Although China was officially backed by allies like India and Brazil, their representatives admitted in private that the negotiations had primarily been China's battle (Graham-Harrison, 2009). 2 China never publically admitted any wrongdoings in dragging on international climate negotiations at Copenhagen or having taken a different stance or strategy that might have contributed to a better outcome there. What has been observed since is that in line with changes in the domestic and international landscapes, China has been recalibrating its position by setting even more stringent mitigation goals than those it had agreed to, adopting new policies and measures while strengthening existing ones, leading South-South cooperation, providing support for technology, financing, and capacity building for climate mitigation and adaptation among other developing countries to the extent possible, and playing a larger role in international climate negotiations. This is clearly reflected in its commitments to cap its carbon emissions by 2030 under the joint China-US climate statement in November 2014. According to their statement, China committed to capping its carbon emissions around 2030, and to trying to peak early, and increasing the share of non-fossil fuel use to around 20% by 2030 (White House, 2014). These commitments were officially incorporated into China's INDC submission. In addition, China pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 60-65% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels (NDRC, 2015).
For quite some time, the United States and China had pointed at the other as the culprit blocking the negotiation process (Zhang, 2007). Thus, Sino-US cooperation on climate change in general and hard commitments to absolute emissions caps specifically have been viewed positively around the world. In particular, because this is the first time that China has moved to cap its total emissions, it has sent a clear signal encouraging the remaining major economies to follow suit and thus help increase the prospects for COP21. In addition to Sino-US statement, prior to the Paris conference, China had signed a series of bilateral statements on climate change with India, Brazil, the EU, France and others to push for a global climate pact to be reached in Paris.

COP21 in Paris
The so-called COP21 aimed to deliver a new universal climate change agreement that holds the average rise in global temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
With six years lost since the failure at Copenhagen, the stake was so high at COP21, because no country can bear another failure. Over 150 heads of countries attended and addressed at the opening ceremony, instead of arriving at the very late stage in previous negotiations. The Chinese President for the first time attended the opening ceremony since Rio, and held a telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama in the very end of the Paris conference to ensure that the historic conference would result in an accord as scheduled. Even if all these were unprecedented, negotiations had not been easy. With two-week-long hard work and concerted efforts of all the parties involved, a landmark Paris deal was reached, charting a clear course for global cooperation on fighting climate change from 2020.
Taking a retrospective perspective, during the course of the negotiations, the major points of contention between developed and developing countries had revolved around the distinction between developed countries and developing countries, the principle of CBDR and the scope of its guidance, finance support and technology transfer for helping mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, the long-term ambition and periodic updating of contributions. These issues had been difficult to agree on at Paris, and whether a consensus on these outstanding issues can be reached determined the outcomes of COP21.
In this process, China continued to coordinate its position with the other BRICS countries -Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa -and, as usual, fought hard that an agreement at Paris needs to reflect equity and the principle of CBDR and respective capabilities. The Paris agreement retains the basic principle, but to accommodate the US demand, it adds "in the light of different national circumstances" to allow for a dynamic interpretation of this differentiation principle. For the sake of other developing countries and the solidarity of the G77 and China as a group, China proposed and insisted on "a concrete roadmap" to scale up the level of pre-2020 financial support by developed countries to achieve the goal of jointly providing US$100 billion annually by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation, which was eventually incorporated into the Paris deal (Li, 2015). China also insisted on "making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climateresilient development". All these core principles and elements have eventually been incorporated into the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015b). In return, China had made several significant concessions to enable reach a deal in Paris.
The most significant compromise is on the long-term ambition of mitigation.
Starting the second week of the Paris negotiation, the European Union and the US joined with 79 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific to form the socalled "high ambition coalition". This coalition comprising well over 100 countries from the rich and developing world strongly pushed for the 1.5-degree target to be recognized in the eventual agreement (McGrath, 2015). The shifts of the US and other industrialized countries in their position in favor of 1.5 °C were motivated by negotiation tactics to separate the poorer developing countries from the large emerging economies (Obergassel et al., 2016). China was widely reported to initially oppose the inclusion of keeping global average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees centigrade. While contentious at first, international climate negotiations since Copenhagen have targeted to limit average global temperature increase below 2 °C as political operationalization of helping to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC according to its Article 2. All negotiations, model calculations and options all surround a 2-degree goal (Lan, 2015;Teng, 2015). There is a significant research gap on the nature, benefits and feasibility of a 1.5 degree world, as well as a huge policy challenge. In China's view, there is lack of clarity on how the 1.5 °C limit was going to be met regarding the responsibility of the industrialized countries for their own reductions and support to developing countries. China also views that it does not make much sense to commit to the 1.5-degree target given that there is a massive commitment gap between the 2-degree target and the emissions reductions pledges in the INDCs (UNFCCC, 2015a(UNFCCC, , 2016). This gap is clearly shown in Figure 1  Related to China, as discussed in the next section, peaking carbon in 2030 means that China would need to bring its current target forward at least a decade. However, this commitment would not be enough to avoid a global surface temperature rise of two degrees by the end of 2100. Meeting the 2-degree target would require a peak in 2020-25, and China's emissions must decrease very quickly. So even if China were to peak in 2030, the necessary emissions reductions afterward are unlikely to be achieved. Being the world's largest carbon emitter and responsible for a growing share of future global emissions, furthering strengthening the target by going beyond the 2-degree target would require China to do even more cut, and this poses a daunting challenge for China. However, China eventually showed flexibility in accommodating most vulnerable countries' concern about having reference made to 1.5 degrees in the final deal. As a result, for the first time, an international climate agreement critically specifies the long-term ambition as "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°" (UNFCCC, 2015b). This is a significant strengthening compared to the earlier 2-degree target that was initially included in the Copenhagen Accord. France supporting stocktaking review of countries' pledges every five years. In Paris, however, China was accused of trying to water down efforts to create a common system for the way countries report on their carbon dioxide emissions and climate change plans. China and other developing countries view that a new system with increased requirements for developing countries, which had been agreed in Cancun, had not yet been made operational, and that therefore this system should first be implemented before moving to a new common system (Obergassel et al., 2016).
China was also reported to support a general stocktaking review of countries' pledges every five years but wanted any updating of the CO 2 emissions reduction targets contained in these plans to be voluntary (Clark, 2015). Given that China is already the world's largest emitter and its share in global emissions continues to grow, it is really a legitimate concern about having inventories, reporting and review of emissions updated regularly on China's side. China eventually compromised on this issue. The Paris Agreement for the first time establishes a universal transparency system. This new system substantially increases the transparency requirements for mitigation actions by developing countries, and at the same time, meets the developing countries' demand for including adaptation and increasing transparency on developed countries' provision of support.

Post Paris focuses
While the dust has settled on the Paris Agreement, everything is not finished yet.
Details of the Paris Agreement still need to be worked out. This includes finance support from developed countries, one area of great concern to developing countries.
Developing countries consider the finance part of the agreement too weak, which does not contain any compulsory language to scale up climate finance, and demand it to be strengthened in the subsequent negotiations.
While the Paris Agreement establishes legally binding obligations of conduct, it does not establish a legally binding obligation for countries to actually achieve their contributions (Obergassel et al., 2016). Thus, the implementation holds the key to actually achieving desired outcomes. For governments around the world, the urgent task of implementing the details of the agreement is to prepare plans and actions in line with their national priorities to achieve the goals set in their INDCs.
Indeed, concerns about a range of environmental stresses and climate change impacts have sparked China's determination to improve energy efficiency and cut both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and to increase the use of clean energy to aide its transition to a low-carbon, green economy (Zhang, 2010b(Zhang, , 2011a(Zhang, , 2014(Zhang, , 2015a(Zhang, , 2016. More specifically, the Chinese government sets absolute limit for energy consumption of 5 billion tons of standard coal equivalent by 2020 (The State Council, 2016), and is attempting to cap coal consumption to let it peak in the 13th five-year plan period , cut coal consumption in absolute terms in severely polluted regions, take unprecedented steps to keep energy consumption and carbon emissions under control in key energy-consuming industries and cities in the context of government decentralization and unprecedented urbanization, strengthen and expand flagship programs and initiatives and supportive economic policies, and increase the widespread use of renewable energy. Moreover, given the many environmental issues of a cross-border nature, neighboring regions -such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Deltanow increasingly act collectively rather than independently. These coordinated efforts significantly increase their effectiveness in combating pollution (CCCCPPRP, 2014;NDRC, 2013NDRC, , 2015Wang et al., 2013;Zhang, 2010bZhang, , 2011aZhang, , 2014Zhang, 2015aZhang, , 2016. In this course, China is increasingly use market-based instruments to complement currently dominated use of administrative measures. Clearly, the imposition of environmental taxes or carbon pricing can internalize externality costs into the market prices. This is also a feasible means of passing through carbon cost to consumers without consumption-based accounting of CO 2 emissions, which is more dataintensive and complex than production-based accounting of CO 2 emissions (Zhang, 2012a). The introduction of environmental taxes to replace current charges for SO 2 emissions and discharged chemical oxygen demand has been discussed in both academic and policy circles in China for quite some time. Draft tax law on environmental protection was released in June 2015 for public comments (Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, 2015), but the timing of its revision and eventual passage of Chinese legislature as a law is unknown and accordingly its exact implementation date has not been set yet; the sooner environmental taxes are imposed in the 13 th FYP, the better, but it should not be later than 2020. Moreover, environmental taxes should be shared taxes, with at least 80% of the revenue going to local governments (Tian and Xu, 2012;Zhang, 2016). However, in terms of timing, given that China has not levied environmental taxes yet, it is better to introduce environmental taxes first in the 13 th FYP, not least because such a distinction will enable to disentangle China's additional efforts towards carbon abatement from those  (Zhang et al., 2014). This means that China will now bring its peak year forward to 2030, at least ten years earlier than under the so-called continued effort scenario, under which it commits to cap its carbon emissions around 2030. Therefore, from this perspective, the commitment of peak carbon by 2030 is ambitious.
The question then is whether China's commitment is sufficiently ambitious. One way is to examine whether emissions peak in 2030 is consistent with the 2°C target.
The LIMITS models project that China's emissions should peak in 2020, under 450 parts per million (ppm) and 500 ppm scenarios, to achieve the 2°C target by the end of 2100 (Tavoni et al., 2015). The results under the Energy Modeling Forum scenario and the SSP (Shared Socio-ecosystem Pathways) scenario suggest that China's emissions should peak during 2020-25 to achieve the same 2°C target. Clearly, China's commitment to let GHG emissions peak in 2030 does not seem to be consistent with the 2°C target in any of the three scenarios. Moreover, China's GHG emissions must quickly decrease for the 2°C target to be achievable. This suggests that even if China were successful in reaching this target, it would be unlikely to achieve the necessary emissions reductions after the peak year (Carraro, 2015).
There are two ways to increase China's ambition. One is to indicate peaking level.
Just like estimates of peaking time differ, estimates of peaking level also differ significantly across studies. An optimistic estimate puts the peaking level at 8.5 gigatons (Gt) CO 2 under the enhanced low-carbon scenario (Jiang et al., 2013), assuming widespread adoption of more advanced low-or zero-carbon technologies without factoring in adoption costs and behavioral changes. Teng and Jotzo (2014) suggest China's carbon emissions peaking during the 2020s and returning to below the 2020 level by 2030 and then to around current levels by 2040. The two studies funded by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology suggest that China should aim to peak carbon emissions below a level of 11 Gt CO 2 over the period 2025-30 (Chen, 2014Energy Research Institute, 2016). The aforementioned Tsinghua-MIT study suggests that China's carbon emissions will peak at 12.1 Gt CO 2 around 2040 in the so-called continued effort scenario and at 10.2 Gt CO 2 around 2030 in the socalled accelerated effort scenario (Zhang et al., 2014). Taking these estimates together, my educated estimate is that China is most unlikely to reveal its peaking emissions level in 2030, and if so, it would not be lower than 10 Gt CO 2 4 unless non-fossil fuel use can contribute to at least 25% of total energy use by 2030.
Another way to show ambition would be to set emissions targets for 2025. The