BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 2

Series:

BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 1
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 2
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 3
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 4
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 5
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 6

The United States’ withdrawal

Times have changed. 2009 and the COP15 have become another world. Fifteen years ago, China thought – or pretended to think – that the issue of climate change was a weapon western countries wanted to use against its economic and political rise. Now, China sees diplomatic benefits in hanging tough on climate change, on being in favour of the Paris Agreement. It was already true three years ago but is even more true today, after Donald Trump’s election.

The agreement appears to have a sufficiently flexible structure and modest enough aims to withstand US withdrawal. Some experts feared that President Trump’s decision would jeopardize the future of the Paris Agreement. Of course, this decision will have a financial impact on at least two institutions: the UNFCC and the Green Climate Fund. The United States used to give 115 million dollars annually to the first (25% of the budget) and had promised to give 3 billion dollars to the second (to this day only 1 billion was given under President Obama). Washington’s decision can be also a bad example for some countries that are not absolutely convinced of the necessity to participate in the Agreement, but which did not want to be publicly opposed to it.

Peking appears to want to take advantage of this situation and might well succeed. In January 2017, just after Donald Trump’s victory, Xi Jinping insisted during the World Economic Forum in Davos on the fact that all signatories should stick to the Paris Agreement “instead of walking away from it”. The same month, Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, said that his country was “capable of taking a leadership role in combating global climate change”.

All these statements must be connected to the so-called “China solution”. This expression was publicly used for the first time in July 2017 on the 95th anniversary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party. During the speech he gave for that occasion, Xi Jinping asserted that the Chinese people were “fully confident that they can provide a China solution to humanity’s search for better social institutions”. Unlike the “China model”, or the “Peking Consensus” (designed to counterbalance the defunct Washington consensus), the “China solution” seems to be – or at least has been conceived to be – applicable everywhere, including in Western countries.

China is more self-confident than ever. It is not a “revisionist power” seeking to overthrow the world order, which it cannot do, or put into question global interdependence which it has greatly profited from, but is clearly eager to expand its influence within the order. In October 2017, during the 19th Party congress, Xi Jinping pledged to lead the world’s second largest economy into a “new era” of international power and influence. It seems clear that a China solution to climate change will be one of the first practical applications of the China solution even if no one can give a precise definition of what that solution is. Xie Zhenhua said that concerning climate change, the next step is to offer China’s own solution, at world level.

Undoubtedly, in years to come, China will be a driving force in the fight against climate change. But, can it become the leader of that fight, as it is now often said? It is of course difficult, if not impossible, to answer a hypothetical question of this kind, given historical contingency.

Nevertheless, some remarks are in order. In international relations theory, leadership is linked to hegemony. As the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci first noted, the concept of hegemony expresses an historical situation in which there is unity between objective economic and material forces or conditions, and a set of dominant philosophic-political ideas. Transposed in the field of international relations, hegemony can be defined as a world level configuration in which a dominant state leads other states and societies, based on consented rather than compelled hierarchy. As Philip Golub puts it “world hegemony implies a hierarchical interstate system based on a large measure of consent, subordinate states deferring to and consenting to what they consider to be a legitimate authority that provides international public goods”.

China is still far from fulfilling these conditions. The country suffers notably from a lack of ideological hegemony, or “soft power”. The term was coined by Joseph Nye at the end of the 1980s to express “the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion”. Obviously, China’s involvement in the Paris agreement contributes to improve the country’s image and, perhaps, to expand its diplomatic influence in “soft power” issues.

But a great number of other decisions and initiatives damage China’s image abroad. The project of the so-called “social-credit-system” that will permit the Party to monitor and control all the citizens is one of them. Peking’s attitude during Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo’s agony in July 2017 gives a good idea of the nature of the regime. The shrinking of academic freedom in Hong Kong despite the Basic Law and the 50-year treaty between Britain and China on the city’s status is an alarming signal. And the inscription of Xi’s “Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” in the Party charter at the end of the 19th Congress in October 2017 does not seem to indicate an evolution towards more political freedom… As Chris Patten put it “The trouble these days (…) (with President Xi Jinping and his Politburo) is (…) that they know little about Marx but a lot about Lenin”.

A quarter of century after the adoption of the UNFCC it appears that international climate change policy poses serious cooperation challenges. According to Robert Keohane: “Whether a hegemon exist or not, international regimes depend on the existence of pattern of common or complementary interests that are perceived or capable of being perceived by political actors.”^[3] If this analysis is right, China can play an important role in the years to come, alongside Europe. It is also noteworthy that, at least on the climate issue, George W. Bush and Donald Trump will have respectively helped Peking to refuse any binding commitment (from 2001 to 2014) and since June 2016 to appear as a leading force in the preservation of climate stability. “^[3]

And perhaps this explains why, in 2013, Prime Minister Trudeau was chastised for his “… level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green … we need to start investing in solar.’”^[4] Based on historical documentation this statement seems to be an ongoing issue, with the Canadian government.^[5] Perhaps this is why our federal government is a partner, not only with the UN, but with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), ICLEI’s subsidiaries/partners^[6] and UNESCO?

In regards to the mechanism used by the UN, not only is it ICLEI, its subsidiaries/ partners, but it is also our universities and even our primary schools.^[7] This insidious movement, which has been growing for well over a decade, should be a wake-up call for all elected officials. When foreign entities abuse our children under the guise of learning, games through their teachers, something must be done, by our government, to remove all of this external political influence. As a nation our children are our greatest gifts/assets and our future leaders. This is where foreign interference, in our political landscape, meets the ground. That is why ICLEI, its subsidiaries, partners and funding should be removed as it is merely the mechanism for the UN and, indirectly, those foreign actors (China) who would undermine western democracies, are allowed to continue to cause harm on a global scale.

“THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS TEACHING GUIDE GRADES 6-12

Peace

… There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”^[8]

^{To be continued in Part 3 of BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution…}

Footnotes

1. Jean-Paul Maréchal is Associate Professor of economics at Université Paris Sud, research fellow at CEI (Collège d’études interdisciplinaires – Université Paris Sud) and associate research fellow at ASIEs (INALCO - National Institute for Oriental Language and Civilization in Paris). His research fields are environmental economics, sustainable development, climate economics and international political economy. He has published numerous articles and six books. One of which was awarded the 2001 prize of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. His latest book is: Chine/USA. Le climat en jeu, Paris, Choiseul, 2011 and his latest edited book is : La Chine face au mur de l’environnement ? Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2017.
2.  Institut De Relations Internationales Et Strategiques – The French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.
3. “What Role for China in the International Climate Regime,” p. 20-23.
4. Trudeau under fire for expressing admiration for China's 'basic dictatorship'
5. “And on page 373 Mr. Trudeau explains why he inserted a quotation from Mao Tse-tung “on strategy and tactics” on the previous page: “Indeed the experience of that superb strategist, Mao Tse-tung, might lead use to conclude that in a vast and heterogeneous country, the possibility of establishing socialist strongholds in certain regions is the very best thing.”
   “Toronto Telegram columnist, Lubor Zink, put it this way: “The New Democrats now have three French Canadians in the Pearson ministry: Jean Marchand, Pierre-Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chretien. Not bad for a party which has so far failed to elect a single MP in Quebec under its own banner.” -- The Canadian Intelligence Service, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fabian Takeover
6. Climate Change Adaptation Changemakers Project
7. UN Student Resources: THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS TEACHING GUIDE GRADES 6-12
8. Teacher’s Guide – “THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS TEACHING GUIDE GRADES 6-12”