China will unveil a national plan next week to combat climate
change, officials of the country's top economic planner said
yesterday.
As part of the government's efforts to meet the challenge of
global warming, the national program will encourage energy
conservation and promote the use of new technology to trap
greenhouse gases, a National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) official told the international media in Beijing.
Most of the plan, to be unveiled by the NDRC, will focus on
goals that have to be achieved by 2010. Among the policies there
will be planting of more saplings to increase forest cover, the
official said.
Climate change is high on the agenda of the G8 annual summit, to
be held in Germany next week. The summit agenda also includes the
Korean Peninsula and Iranian nuclear issues and the Darfur question
in Sudan.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country assumes the
presidency of the summit this year, hopes the G8 summit would pave
the way for an extension of the UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on
global warming by agreeing on concrete steps to reduce the emission
of greenhouse gases.
But the US and some developing countries are opposed to
mandatory caps.
China insists developed countries should take the lead in
reducing gas emissions and that resolving this issue needs the
cooperation of all countries based on their respective
responsibilities, capacities and levels of economic
development.
"A mandatory quota for China now will not be fair, therefore it
cannot accept it," another Chinese official told the international
media.
President Hu Jintao will attend the outreach session of the G8
summit on the invitation of Merkel, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing yesterday.
The heads of G8 members - the US, the UK, France, Germany,
Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia - and leaders of five developing
countries, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, will also
attend the meeting.
The meeting "will help strengthen North-South dialogue and
cooperation, and is conducive to pushing for the solution of global
problems", Hu told Merkel over the telephone yesterday.
China will work, in the spirit of equal partnership, with
leaders of Germany and other countries attending the summit for an
in-depth exchange of views on prominent global issues and help the
dialogue to achieve a positive outcome, Hu said.
Chinese analysts said Hu would use the dialogue between leaders
of "the rich club" and the developing countries to let Beijing's
position on important global issues, including global warming, be
known to the world.
China should let the world know about its efforts to cut gas
emissions to counter some developed countries' unfair criticism,
said Wu Miaofa, a researcher with the China Institute of the
International Studies.
(China Daily June 1, 2007)
