This story was produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Network.
BAKU, Azerbaijan—A steady stream of international governments and business leaders have flocked to the China pavilion, one of the largest of dozens of showcases here, at this month’s 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention. Climate Change (COP29). Inside, a calligraphy artist inscribes folding fans for distribution, along with President Xi Jinping’s panda and books. Guests drink green tea and exchange business cards with Chinese representatives amid flags and red paper lanterns.
At the pavilion’s high-level forum on global “South-South cooperation”, government ministers from Nigeria and Chad spoke alongside UN officials. United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell praised China as a “leader by example.” clean energy investments in the developing world. “We will need continued leadership from China” at COP29, where countries are trying to agree on a new climate finance target, as well as at COP30 in Brazil next year, Stiell said. China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, Huang Runqiu, signed a memorandum of understanding to invest in renewable energy in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
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“XIX century was the century of Europe, XX. The century was the American century, and the XXI. The 20th century will largely be the century of Asia,” said Erik Solheim of the International Green Development Coalition of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The US delegation has largely been a lame duck here. President-elect Donald Trump has said it will come out of the Paris Agreement, under which these COP summits are held, and double the drilling of oil and gas. It also plans to raise tariffs on Chinese goods, including clean energy technologies, and potentially sever traditional trade ties with the country.
US import barriers would be a short-term blow to the Chinese economy. But in other ways, Trump may be giving Beijing a gift: the U.S. withdrawal from international climate policy deliberations will give China greater influence. And if Trump rescinds some of the Biden-era climate manufacturing subsidies that Trump calls the “Green New Scam,” it could ultimately mean less competition for China in cutting-edge technology.
China is “ready to take a more active role in global climate governance.” he said an official from its resource and environmental planning organization at a COP29 side event. In fact, some participants say that Beijing has been more visible and assertive in the current negotiations than in previous years.
The US is urging China – now the world’s second-largest economy and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history – to join the group of developed countries that will contribute the most money under the new climate finance arrangement, which calls for wealthier nations. helping to finance adaptation measures in the poorest. But last week China said it has already provided $24 billion for climate projects in developing countries since 2016, suggesting it will continue to meet external demands. Leaving Paris, the US has little reason to argue. The US and Chinese embassies, which were placed next to each other at the last two summits to encourage face time, have been separated this year.
Speaking american scientific Li Shuo of the Asia Society Policy Institute likened current climate policy to a “tricycle” made up of the US, the European Union and China, and said the US wheel is falling off. “We can still go forward if you have two wheels,” he said. “So we will see more restructuring between (China and the EU) and they will set the agenda without the US”
An isolationist US could also open up opportunities for China’s soft power. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative has done so invest 1 trillion dollars in energy and infrastructure projects in the last decade in 150 countries, gaining trade and resources and political power. The US is also active in many of these countries, but that could change under Trump.
Project 2025, a second-term wish list created by 100 former Trump officials and others, the calls For cutting the budget of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) by 2019 or lower and removing any (country) funding that directly or indirectly deals with Chinese entities. He also wants to focus USAID’s climate change programs on oil and gas.
China’s COP29 chief negotiator, Zhao Yingmin, said American scientific that the nation’s investment policy in the Global South is “fully based on our capabilities” and “has nothing to do with other countries”. But if the U.S. ends aid to countries like Nigeria, which hosts several USAID projects, that could create a “void” for rivals like China to fill, according to Michael Ivenso, an energy transition analyst at the Nigerian delegation.
Under the agreement signed at COP29, China will build a large solar farm in Nigeria, financed with a grant rather than a loan, he said. American scientific. China has it signed similar documents on climate cooperation with 42 other developing countries. “When one power goes out, it creates the opportunity for another to come in,” said Ivenso. “If the U.S. decides that’s what they’re going to do, and China — maybe Russia and other (countries) — get into that space they’ve left now, that’s the problem to deal with.”
There is also tension around new technologies. China already controls 80 percent of the world’s solar panel supply chain. Several Biden-era laws, including the Surge Inflation Act, were intended to help US companies compete in nascent markets such as batteries, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel. Trump, however, has said that he will repeal these laws. Moreover, using his mandated sweeping tariffs could turn the U.S. cleantech industry into what Li calls “a fat bird living on an isolated island,” safe from predators at home but unable to compete abroad.
Repealing Biden’s law could cost $80 billion in green energy investment overseas and $50 billion in lost exports, according to Johns Hopkins University. the report released this month. U.S. cleantech “needs more collaboration instead of this high-fence, small-yard mentality,” said Haimeng Zhang, vice president of major solar producer LONGi. open A factory in Ohio with a US company this year. “That’s not very helpful in developing your industry.”
The two US congressional delegations to COP29 embody these two conflicting perspectives. A delegation of four Republicans and one Democrat in the US House of Representatives promised to “unleash America’s energy” with “reliable” natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power and “clean coal” technologies. However, a delegation of Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ed Markey of Massachusetts said continued US investment in green energy innovation would give China an unsurpassed lead in new technologies. Markey promised a “vigorous fight” on the Anti-Inflation Act in Congress, where 18 House Republicans have spoken in support of the bill.
“If China has a plan, and we don’t have a plan, we will lose,” he said. “We will lose the markets of the planet. We will miss cutting-edge technological advances that would otherwise be conceptualized in the US.”
