China stands as constructive player in global fight against climate change

RESPONSIBLE POWER

While taking bold actions and making progress on its own climate change fight, China has also taken an active part in international cooperation in climate change and provided assistance within its capability to other developing countries.

The country has inked a bunch of bilateral climate agreements with big emitters like the United State, France, India, Brazil and the European Union.

During Xi's state visit to the United States in September, China and the United States issued a second joint statement on climate change, following their first in November 2014, sending a strong signal that the top two economies in the world will join hands to tackle the global challenge.

In a joint China-France statement on climate change issued during French President Francois Hollande's visit to Beijing in early November, the two countries agreed to have a five-year review process to assess and strengthen national commitments to be sure that there won't be more than two degrees of global warming by the end of the century.

Over the years, China has earnestly fulfilled its policy commitments of South-South cooperation regarding climate change to support developing countries.

In September, Beijing announced the establishment of an independent South-South cooperation fund of 20 billion RMB (3.1 billion U.S. dollars) to help the developing countries affected by global warming.

"Xi has embraced China's role of the largest emerging economy to help developing countries to tackle climate change via South-South cooperation, providing financial, technological and capacity building support," said Morgan.

Echoing Morgan's view, Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said China, as an emerging economy, offered a concrete pledge to fight global warming, adding that the positive and generous step will benefit those developing countries in lack of funds.

At the Paris climate summit, Xi also pledged to launch cooperation projects next year to set up 10 pilot low-carbon industrial parks and start 100 mitigation and adaptation programs in other developing countries and provide them with 1,000 training opportunities on climate change.

"This shows China's consistent stance of supporting developing countries," said He Jiankun, a climate change expert of Tsinghua University.