On the afternoon of December 11, 2009, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei held a briefing for Chinese and foreign media at Bella Center, venue of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, introducing the policy, proposition and measures of the Chinese government to tackle climate change and answering questions of the media. More than 100 journalists from over 60 Chinese and foreign media, including Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily, CCTV, Reuters, Kyodo News, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, attended the briefing.
He said that China attaches great importance to the Copenhagen conference. Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the conference, which is another major effort of Chinese leaders to consult with leaders of other countries on how to handle climate change following President Hu Jintao’s attendance of the UN climate change summit in September this year and confirms the great attention paid by the Chinese government and leaders to the issue of climate change and the Copenhagen conference.
He stressed that the success of the Copenhagen conference depends on the following conditions: first, the conference must reflect the common will of all countries to tackle climate change; second, developed countries must implement their medium-term substantial emission reduction targets, fulfill their obligations defined in the Convention and its Protocol and honor their commitments of providing developing countries with fund, technology transfer and capacity building support in line with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”; third, the priority needs of developing countries of poverty eradication and economic development must be met and no outcome of the conference shall be achieved at the cost of the development interest of developing countries.
He reiterated that the Chinese government, fully recognizing the seriousness and urgency of climate change issue, is committed to the road of sustainable development and has adopted strong policy, measures and actions to address the issue. It announced not long ago specific targets of controlling greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, including corresponding policy measures and action plans. They are both China’s policy targets of domestic economic development and major contributions to the international cooperation on coping with climate change. The actions and targets taken and established independently by China are highly challenging. Without any condition attached, they neither take the action of any other country as the precondition nor are negotiable. China will continue to try its best to control greenhouse gas emissions in the process of economic development and poverty elimination, contribute to protecting the global climate and demonstrate its determination and sincerity of coping with climate change with real actions.
He noted that China has established the statistics, monitoring and performance evaluation system on its mitigation actions. It is willing to make continuous improvement of the system according to related international standards and on this basis make public its mitigation actions and effects through the appropriate form in due course so as to increase the international transparency of its domestic actions. But China does not accept any international inspection on the mitigation actions which are taken independently by a developing country with its own resources.
In response to the so-called China-US G2 grouping in the field of climate change, he pointed out that climate change needs to be addressed jointly by all countries. The US is a developed country while China is a developing one. One is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Annex I country while the other is a non-Annex I country. Their responsibilities and obligations are different in nature. To put China on a par with the US neither has legal basis nor conforms to the fact. The US climate negotiator either lacks common sense or goes against the China-US joint statement issued when President Barack Obama visited China for saying that no US climate change funding would go to China.
As to the special concerns of small island developing countries, he expressed complete understanding and emphasized that their fundamental concerns are the same with those of other developing countries, i.e. the ineffective implementation of international legal documents in the past and developed countries’ failure of really fulfilling their commitments. Developing countries hold the identical position on this point.
He noted that China attends the negotiation process in a positive, constructive and responsible attitude and will make great efforts to urge all parties to increase consensus, reduce differences and enhance confidence with the maximum sincerity and join hands with the rest of the international community to promote the success of the Copenhagen conference.