Cleaner Greener China

Following my post yesterday on the tit for tat that was taking place between UK and Chinese press conferences, Mark Lynas’s Guardian article How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room went to press.

The article is a must read in my opinion as it gives reader a look through one person’s eyes of what was going on in the final days of COP15 negotiations.

Here’s what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

… and why did China feel they were in a position to do this?  He has a few ideas (I am cutting quite a bit of analysis to make this short):

First, it (China) was in an extremely strong negotiating position. China didn’t need a deal. As one developing country foreign minister said to me: “The Athenians had nothing to offer to the Spartans.”  [....] Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone [....] the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken.

… and I would like to take a minute to add a few things.

I think it needs to be said that before anyone purchased a ticket to COP15 this stage was already set to implode.  This is not something that just happened at COP15. Some would say that the Singapore announcement 2 weeks prior to COP15 laid the path to failure, others are happy to go back to Kyoto.

Me? I would say that this path was laid the minute that everyone focused on “carbon”.. and the evils of “carbon”.. and that we need to capture, trade, or kill “carbon.. and as everyone (except China and a few others) drank the carbon kool-aid, things were set up for a conflict.

The motivations were intangible to some (Carbon is not China’s main concern), the goals (of each party) were not clear, and the strategies of counterparts never adjusted.

How could this have gone well?

Perhaps I ask this question naively having witnessed the exact same train wreck on the international trade front over and over again, but maybe not.  Wen not showing up for the meeting, and sending in #2 was a huge lose of face for everyone in the room, but EVERYONE in the room should have known to leave the room.  TO have sat in that room, and actually expected to negotiate with the #3 (Hu is #1 and Wen is #2) showed that the major powers still do not understand how to negotiate with China on China’s terms.

So here is a tip. Next time the #2 sends in #3 to negotiate on behalf of China, you can either (1) Go outside the hall and wait for the #2 to get to the hall … in front of the press…. or (2) open the meeting up to the media and force #3 to act the role of lead negotiator and push for everything.

I am not saying that China is right in what they did, nor am I saying that everyone should cave into the position of China, but in my mind had the developed powers simply failed on two counts: (1) to engage China in a meaningful way to China and (2) failed to lead China into falling over its own trapdoor.

No doubt this is going to get uglier, and while I foresee China regretting its last move, in the end it is all a moot anyway.