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Is China Still a Developing Country?
Reporting from Copenhagen
China and the U.S. spent much of last week goading each other on impassible positions.
The Chinese, on behalf of developing country colleagues in the G77, want developed countries to live up to their “historic responsibility” for climate change and provide enough funding for adaptation and mitigation to help developing countries face the challenges posed by climate change.
The U.S., while offering money to developing countries, denied that China is still a developing country.
Over the course of the week’s press briefings, China’s lead negotiator, Su Wei, and Special Representative for Climate Change Yu Qingtai repeatedly berated the U.S. for not doing enough in terms of its emissions reduction targets or its financial commitments.
Last Tuesday, Su called the U.S. commitments “neither notable or remarkable” and said that the U.S. was fudging its numbers by making emissions reductions targets from 2005 levels. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions grew almost 17% from 1990 until 2007, he pointed out. Promising a 17% reduction by 2020 on 2005 numbers equates to little more than a 4% drop from 1990 levels. Most other countries are using 1990 as the baseline, which was agreed to at Kyoto.
In a press conference on Friday, He Yafei, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, clearly stipulated “China is a developing country.”
He acknowledged that while China’s aggregate GDP is very large, China still has 150 million people below the poverty line of a population of 1.3 billion. According to UN figures for 2007, mainland China's GDP per capita was just $2,604, lower than its emerging market compatriots Brazil and South Africa. Comparatively, India’s was $976 and the United States' was $45,047.
“I think China is still clearly a developing country, but it's a complex one with non-trivial wealth," said China expert and businessman Alexander Conrad.
"China's recent economic growth has been remarkable, millions have been lifted out of poverty and significant infrastructure has been put in place, yet millions remain in poverty and further investment as a developing country is needed. This is best viewed by looking at China's GDP or other metrics on a per capita basis, which validates the 'developing' status for the country.”
For the developing countries, who face the greatest threat from climate change, Copenhagen is about defending not only their right to industrialize in the longer term, 
but more so not losing ground they have gained already.
The U.S., noting China is the world’s fastest increasing emitter, has called for Beijing to commit to hard carbon caps.
Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, notes that “virtually all the growth in emissions going forward — nearly all of it — is going to come from developing countries. The IEA estimates 97 percent is going to come from developing countries between now and 2030. Fifty percent of it — 50 percent — from China alone over the next 20 years, of the growth in emissions.”
He Yafei says China is doing its part:
“China’s commitment is unconditional. What we have committed voluntarily is in full accord with Bali action plan. It has a full legal guarantee domestically. If you will compare what we are going to do with that of developed countries I would say proudly, is what we will be doing is no less than any developed country."
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China will be a developed
China will be a developed country and superpower in 20 to 30 years
thank you
thank you
It would be nice if you to
It would be nice if you to write one for small to medium size college essay websites, and how they could promote their websites. Personally as a web developer with a medium size website I see banner exchange solutions such as www.admatchup.com as my best available option. I'll be looking forward to your thoughts.
Todd Stern is ignorant
He only talks about the emission growth, but not the historical and current emission. The developed nations currently account for 90% of planet's green gas dump. The developed nations must have a big cut to make room for developing countries to dump. If he truly believes that 50 percent of the growth in emissions in the next 20 years will come from China (even if it is true, China emissions per capita is still less than half of US), the most effective and efficient way for developed nations is to help China to tackle the problem in a big way, rather than give some developing countries peanuts and deny China and other big developing countries any funding
Essentially will
Essentially will the US be borrowing (and paying interest on) money from the Chinese Government, only to donate it back to them??
Chinese Aid?
"China’s aid and investment activities in Africa alone totaled over $33 billion from 2002-2007."
Make no mistake, China's interest in Africa is for oil reserves, the Aid that they've given is in exchanged for leases and rights to oil from Nigeria to Liberia a simple google search will show you that.
Answer the real Question
The real Question is, will China be receiving funds from developed nations like the rest of the poor developing nations will?
Essentially will the US be borrowing (and paying interest on) money from the Chinese Government, only to donate it back to them?
When we ask if China is
When we ask if China is still a developing country, in this context at least, what we mean is: to what extent should China be bound by the rules proposed for wealthy nations and to what extent by those for poorer ones. One thing to remember is that the rules we are talking about aren't for the past but for the future--for many decades in the future. And this makes the case for China to claim impoverished status even more absurd than it would otherwise be. While China's per capita income level is currently low, it certainly won't be in a decade's time and even less in two decade's time. Couple this with the massive foreign currency reserves China already holds, and this makes any claim of China needing help pretty ridiculous. In fact, I think a good case could be made for China, already the world's largest CO2 polluter, to start funding the greening of truly poor nations.
Re: But what else?
The real Question is, will China be receiving funds from developed nations like the rest of the poor developing nations will?
Essentially will the US be borrowing (and paying interest on) money from the Chinese Government, only to donate it back to them?
China Strategy
Good.... U have a pretty blog ! Is Wen preponing Copenhagen visit to counter Browns'
$ 100 Bn bait to kill Kyoto ?
China is a developing country
Is China Still a Developing Country?
The answer is an obvious yes in all measures. China's GDP per capita was about $3,000, not only lower than that of the United States ($45,000), but also lower than Brazil ($10,000) and South Africa ($5,000). China also has 150 million people below the poverty line by the UN definition, equivalent to half of US population. China greenhouse gas emissions per capita is less than a quarter of US. where is the conclusion "China is the only one of the group able to fund it’s own green transition." coming from? Is that because China has taken proactive measures to allocate a large fund to solve the issue? That is not fair at all.
Given the above facts, China is already already doing a big favor to the world by pledging 40-45% reduction in the emission growth rate.
Todd Stern is ignorant. He only talks about the emission growth, but not the historical and current emission. The developed nations currently account for 90% of planet's green gas dump. The developed nations must have a big cut to make room for developing countries to dump. If he truly believes that 50 percent of the growth in emissions in the next 20 years will come from China (even if it is true, China emissions per capita is still less than half of US), the most effective and efficient way for developed nations is to help China to tackle the problem in a big way, rather than give some developing countries peanuts and deny China and other big developing countries any funding.
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