China offers lukewarm response to Bush on climate
Date: 18-Feb-02
Country: CHINA
Bush last week put forward a voluntary plan for U.S. companies to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pollutants from power plants and industrial sources.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman made no direct comment on Bush's plan, but said Beijing was still pursuing the Kyoto treaty and called on developed countries to take the lead in cutting emissions blamed by many scientists for causing global warming.
"We think developed countries have the obligation to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because they are the main greenhouse gas emitters in the past and now," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement.
China has been pushing for early passage of the embattled Kyoto accord to curb global warming, saying it would help industrial and poor countries alike.
"Developing countries, including China, are all victims of climate change," he said, but added poor nations were preoccupied with building their economies and eliminating poverty.
China had made an effort to cut greenhouse emissions while building its economy, and was studying the Kyoto treaty and would try to approve it as soon as possible, Kong said.
"China is willing to strengthen cooperation with all countries on climate change under the U.N. Climate Change Frame Treaty and Kyoto Treaty," he said.
China is among a large group of developing nations not required to meet the emissions caps contained in the Kyoto Protocol before 2012.
U.S. PULLS OUT
Last March, the United States pulled out of the 1997 United Nations anti-pollution treaty, signed by Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton, saying it would harm the economy.
The accord has been ratified by more than 180 countries, the United Nations says.
China spews an estimated 11 percent of the world's carbon emissions into the atmosphere, while the United States emits about one quarter of the world's man-made "greenhouse gases".
Premier Zhu Rongji has spearheaded Beijing's campaign to balance breakneck economic growth with sound environmental policy, boosting awareness of the country's smog-filled skies and sludge-bound rivers.
The State Council in January approved a plan to spend some 65 billion yuan ($7.85 billion) on cleaning up and set strict pollution control targets in the five years to 2005.
Still, critics are sceptical China can transform industrial polluters like illegal coal mines that employ impoverished migrants and rural families.
