Copenhagen: China's Predictable Act of Game Change

Xiaorong Li

The UN Summit on climate change ended in a non-binding agreement. China and the US, for different reasons, hail it as a victory. Toward the end of the negotiations, Politico reported that China's negotiators were pushing for "a short, noncommittal collective statement" rather than a full-fledged binding agreement. What came out of the summit is something that those monitor China’s human rights have predicted. China emerged as the central holdout, leading developing countries with high emission rates, which, they said, if they were mandated to lower, would slow down their economy and cost billions, which they wanted the industrialized countries to pay.
No one should be surprised to learn from Copenhagen that the last thing the Chinese government wants is a binding agreement, transparency of its actions in implementing it and any opportunity for international monitoring. Yet, China also wants to appear a key player in global efforts to combat climate change.
China also says it deserves being given “exception”. Now that sounds familiar! Chinese officials told the gathering of world leaders that China is still a developing country and should not be held responsible for its carbon emissions as a developed country should. But China has become a big industrial country and replaced the US in 2006 to become the largest greenhouse gases producer. Without firm commitment by China and the US to abide by an enforceable treaty, with measurable benchmarks, to cut down emission, there is little hope to slow down climate change.
Copenhagen accentuates the stark choices that the Chinese leaders must make sooner or later: Will China rise as a responsible, cooperative, and rule-binding world power, a force to do good in solving global problems? Or will China rise as a force to undermine international efforts, imposing its own political will, changing the rule of the game by swinging its sheer weight around on world stage?
While many have been charmed and seduced by China’s rapid rising power status, it is easy to turn blind eyes to the fact that the Chinese government rules above the law at home. It needs the law and uses it as its political tool. The Chinese leaders love rule by law, but they have kept rule of law at bay! The government has little transparency in its decision making. It is un-accountable to its people, even those who would be negatively affected by its decisions and policies. Such a power is naturally averse to any international monitoring and efforts at holding it accountable to binding rules constraining its exercise.
It is true that China has singed on to binding international rules. That is when there were enough pressure and incentives. In 1998, China signed and ratified the binding human rights treaty International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICSECR), and also signed (but has not ratified) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. At that time, China was eager to return to international stage with as a respectable power player. It still had to struggle to shed off bad reputations after it had bloodily butchered peaceful pro-democracy protesters on Tiananmen ten years back, in 1989.

The key to getting China to sign binding agreement on cutting emission, then, is making the government understand what is at stake for its own interest -- if climate change can’t be quickly contained. And monitoring is necessary if any quick effective emission cut is to be achieved.
Even if China had signed a binding international agreement in Copenhagen, it does not mean action. It is important to take seriously the lessons learnt from the way in which China evades its treaty obligations to international human rights law:
First, when ratifying an international treaty, China never fails to take reservations on key articles and opt not to accept optional protocols. Thus China took reservation on the article stipulating the right to form independent union in the ICSECR. It also took reservations on articles governing monitoring and refused to adopt the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. These moves practically exempted China from inspection by the Committee against Torture and prevented Chinese citizens from reporting individual cases to the Committee.
Secondly, international monitoring of China’s implementation of its treaty obligations and holding it accountable has been very difficult, if not impossible. Twenty-one years after China signed and ratified the Convention against Torture, the Chinese law has not yet been fully revised to conform to the treaty’s requirements, perpetrators have rarely been held criminally responsible, victims are hardly ever compensated, and torture remains rampant in detention centers, jails, and in law enforcement. (These are documented in the UN Committee against Torture’s 2008 “Concluding Observation & Recommendations” issued after its review of China’s own report on the implementation of this treaty in the past five years: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/457/10/PDF/G0845710.pdf?OpenElement)
Thirdly, even after a treaty is signed and ratified, China would resist very hard any monitoring efforts. China responded to the CAT “Observations” with a belligerent comment, denouncing its conclusions as “biased” and the sources it cited as “fabricated” by groups whose purpose was to “overthrow the Chinese government”. (See UN document CAT/C/CHN/CO/4/Add.1) At the UN Human Rights Council, where China lobbied hard and voluntarily pledged to promote human rights in order to get re-elected for a second term in 2009, it plays an aggressive role in trying to change the rules and practices that give the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms some teeth. E.g., China is trying to undo the UN practice of appointing independent experts to the Committee against Torture or to the positions of mandate holders of the Special Procedures monitoring different thematic issues of human rights or specific countries. China does not want the experts to do the job independently. If China has its way, the professors, lawyers, judges and NOG human rights advocates, who currently serve as volunteers in these posts will be replaced one day by diplomats and politicians from member states.

Taking these lessons seriously allows environmentalists and others who care about climate change to work more effectively toward their goals by, for instance, supporting efforts at democratic reform, rule of law changes, and improvement in protection of human rights in China.