Chinese diplomats will arrive in Azerbaijan with a message for the UN COP29 climate conference. In the “real world”, they will argue, China is racing ahead of schedule in its efforts to decarbonise its economy. It is also helping the developing world do the same via its booming renewable energy and electric vehicle industries, as well as its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.Chinese officials, meanwhile — in line with recent discussions with diplomats and other foreign visitors — are expected to push back at moves from Washington and Brussels that link negotiations over climate change to Beijing’s industrial policy and trade practices. They will also be increasingly assertive in highlighting China’s efforts to finance the green transition in the developing world, despite western calls for Beijing to be more ambitious.And, with COP29 opening after Donald Trump’s US presidential election win, expectations that the country will withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change have been raised.Li Shuo, an analyst of Chinese climate and energy policy, says global climate diplomacy is at risk of becoming “more politicised, more divisive” and drifting to “a rather irrelevant status” because of the US government’s insistence on linking climate and trade issues.“China’s impressive success when it comes to embracing the low-carbon economy . . . is not a political story but a ‘real economy’ story,” argues Li, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute think-tank. “Which part of the world wins that ‘real economy’ competition?”Beijing’s growing confidence in climate diplomacy marks a significant change after years of pressure from western leaders, who have argued that the world’s biggest polluter — accounting for about a third of global emissions — needs to act more quickly to help the world tackle global warming. Several statistics point towards China’s decarbonisation efforts outstripping Beijing’s expectations, and progressing towards the dual goals of peak emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060 that President Xi Jinping announced four years ago. Beijing achieved its target of having 1,200 gigawatts of installed solar and wind capacity — enough to power hundreds of millions of homes annually — in July, six years early. The government’s original goal of electric vehicles to account for half of car sales by 2035 is on course to be achieved next year.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.At the same time, China’s foreign direct investment outflows are tracking at record levels. They are underpinned by cleantech investments in the developing world and supported by one of Xi’s hallmark foreign policies, the Belt and Road, which Beijing is now refocusing on green investments.China’s emissions could even fall this year: CO₂ output in the third quarter hovered around last year’s levels and declined in the previous three months, according to an analysis by UK-based climate news site Carbon Brief. This reflects, in part, both the surge in low-carbon electricity generation in China, which is home to about two-thirds of the world’s solar and wind power projects under construction, and transport sector electrification. It also raises the possibility that China’s total emissions peaked in 2023 — seven years ahead of Xi’s 2030 target. The China-Laos high-speed railway, a key project of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, connects Kunming, capital of the Yunnan province, with Vientiane More
