China has disappointed John Kerry. Or has the U.S. disappointed Kerry? It’s not always clear as it should be.
Talking to Axios earlier this week, our climate Metternich expressed his disappointment that “what was not supposed to happen has happened, which is the climate issue has gotten mixed up into all the other tensions that exist between our countries.”
This is, doubtless, despite his best efforts. After all, back in late 2021, he sidestepped a question about whether he had brought up human-rights issues in the discussions he had held with Chinese leadership, issues including China’s used of forced labor in the manufacture of solar panels. The latter, of course, is a horror within a wider horror — the genocide of the Uyghurs. Kerry’s response was to say that it was not in his “lane.’ His job was to be “the climate guy, and stay focused on trying to move the climate agenda forward.”
When, in August last year, the Beijing regime suspended talks with the U.S. on climate change in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Kerry grumbled that “no country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences.”
“Bilateral differences” is, like, Kerry’s “all the other tensions” from 2021, a carefully bland phrase, and it’s worth noting that, when talking to Axios (at least in the extracts that were published), he managed to almost make China seem like the wronged party:
“They’ve kind of pulled back a little bit, expressing the feeling that all we’re doing is bashing them and bashing them.”
Underlying all this is the fact that China prioritizes climate change rather less highly than Kerry. China has scientists, too — good ones — but they do not seem so convinced about climate change’s supposedly “existential” threat as does Kerry. But I suspect Beijing does see the West’s belief in such a threat as something that can be used against it:
I wrote about these different priorities in August:
To the extent that [China has] invested in renewables, it’s either been as a business opportunity (and one that it has used to leave the West dangerously reliant on Chinese suppliers) or as part of the country’s current drive to a form of autarky. If Beijing is concerned about the climate (not that much, it appears) it sees that as just one issue to be considered among many others, and one incidentally that has to be subordinated to geopolitical issues, the need to support economic growth and, of course, preserve the party’s control.
Also from this month (via Reuters, March 5):
China’s state planner underlined a greater role for coal in its power supply on Sunday, saying the fossil fuel would be used to improve the reliability and security of its energy system.
Soaring global energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and domestic supply disruption have prompted Beijing to step up its focus on energy security in recent years.
China has, as I noted above, invested in renewables, but, as Reuters reports:
Fluctuating output from renewable plants, however, has led policymakers to lean on reliable and easily dispatchable coal power to shore up the country’s baseload supply.
Oh.