Is China a climate goodie or baddie – or both?

You could tell me that China still gets most of its electricity from coal and is building more new fossil fuel power plants than anywhere else in the world. And you’d be right.

You could also tell me that China – with a sixth of the world’s population – is installing about half of the world’s new renewable energy. And you’d be right too.

In fact, you could read academic experts making all of the above points on The Conversation website. It’s OK to feel confused: China really is a key driver of both emissions and solutions.

The world’s largest emitter is also the single most important country in determining how much the climate will breakdown and whether the world will do enough to stop it. So what should we make of China and its role in global climate policy?

Imagine a negotiating hall in the Brazilian port city of Belem six weeks from now – it’s the COP30 climate summit. Officials are murmuring to each other, translators are whispering into their headsets, and people are crowding around one delegation in particular.

It isn’t the United States or the European Union drawing the crowd – it’s China. Until relatively recently, this would have seemed an outlandish suggestion.

Shifting eastward

But over the past few years many academics from around the world have made the same point: China is increasingly becoming a world leader in climate diplomacy.

For decades, many assumed such leadership would come from the US or Europe. But as American commitment has wavered, and Europe seems preoccupied by other matters, expectations are shifting eastward.

Yixian Sun, an associate professor of international development at the University of Bath, is convinced it’s time for China to step up:

As an emerging superpower with advantages in clean technologies and a leadership that recently reaffirmed their commitment to climate action, the country is well positioned.

Shannon Gibson, who researches the dynamics of United Nations climate negotiations at the University of Southern California, insisted that China already is stepping up in her analysis:

[Beijing] seems to be happily filling the climate power vacuum created by the US exit [from the Paris agreement].

China, she pointed out, is using leadership on climate change as part of a “broader strategy of gaining influence and economic power by supporting economic growth and cooperation in developing countries.”

Whether Beijing is engaging in climate diplomacy reluctantly, enthusiastically or strategically, something is clearly shifting. There was a nice illustration of this at the last UN climate summit, COP29 in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku in 2024.

Paris agreement

At the time, Lucia Green-Weiskel, of Trinity College in the US, reported on a spat over whether China should provide funds to help poorer countries adapt to climate change at a level comparable to other big emitters. The dispute, she noted:

Almost shut down the entire conference.

Previously, only UN-listed “developed countries” were expected to pay. Yet, the draft agreement called on “all actors” to scale up financing. This would have included China, which is a major emitter today but only industrialised recently.

In the end, a compromise was reached. Green-Weiskel said the final agreement “excluded China from the heavier expectations placed on richer nations.”

Beijing recently pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 7% to 10% by 2035, as part of its commitments under the Paris agreement. Most analysts were underwhelmed, arguing that China should be more ambitious.

But Myles Allen and Kai Jiang, of the University of Oxford, said it’s worth taking pledges like this seriously as “Beijing has form in only promising what it plans to deliver.” They noted that, for instance, China looks set to deliver on a promise to peak its emissions this decade:

That is barely 50 years after it began to industrialise in earnest. China’s targets aren’t just slogans or aspirations – they are statements of intent, grounded in what the country believes it can deliver. And where China goes, others will follow.

That’s because even fairly modest revisions to its targets can shift expectations and put pressure on other big emitters to do more.

We can’t simply assert that China is a goodie or a baddie when it comes to global climate change policy. This is complex stuff with lots of moving parts, and you can easily change perceptions simply by emphasising coal power over new solar, or vice versa.

Climate change

Some will say any leadership is better than a vacuum. And China does seem serious about addressing climate change than many Western governments.

But others might feel uneasy. Are we ready for a global climate order in which it’s Beijing calling the shots, not Washington or Brussels?

Will de Freitas is the Environment + Energy Editor at The Conversation.

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter Imagine.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.