Li Shuo – On China’s domestic and international climate politics

Planet A - Talks on Climate Change

In the 2nd episode of season 2 of Planet A, Dan Jørgensen talks with Li Shuo from Greenpeace East Asia about Chinese domestic and international climate politics ahead of COP26.

Li Shuo works as Greenpeace’s Senior Climate and Energy Policy Officer in Beijing and leads the NGO’s international political delegation at the COP-meetings. Thus, he offers a unique insight regarding China’s domestic environmental policies and its relationship to the international climate negotiations.

Li Shuo argues that the Sino-American relationship has deteriorated during Trump’s Presidency and is now at rock bottom. Thus, even though both countries realize that they have to work together in order to achieve a successful outcome at COP26, it will be quite difficult to resume the bilateral collaboration that forged the Paris Agreement.

Accordingly, the EU could play an important role at COP26, in what Li Shuo describes as a “tricycle dynamic”. Due to Europe’s ambitious climate goals and policies, it acts as the tricycle’s front wheel, while the US and China have been acting as parallel rear-wheels.

Li Shuo also provides a different perspective on China’s recent dual goals to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. He argues that the announcement of the goals in and by itself should be seen as a trial balloon to gauge the level of consensus within the Chinese leadership for unilateral climate action.

Furthermore, he explains how China’s remarkable economic growth over the last four decades was largely spurred by coal-based manufacturing. However, while economic growth remains a priority for the Chinese leadership, the resulting air pollution has emerged as a defining political priority.

However, while China’s leadership is trying to wean the country off coal, it faces stiff opposition from the domestic coal industry that retains preferential access to the electricity grid and seeks to delay deployment of renewables.