China’s Small Steps Look Bigger Next to Trump’s Retreat
Beijing’s climate and trade pledges at the U.N. highlighted how modest moves can stand out when the United States is pulling back from global leadership.
David Pierson The New York Times
Reporting from Hong Kong
Over a week of appearances at the United Nations, China tried to send the message that Beijing, not Washington, was the responsible power willing to shoulder global duties just as the United States, under President Trump, was signaling retreat.
China’s leaders used the U.N. General Assembly to roll out pledges on trade and fighting climate change that were notable less for their substance than for the image they projected of China as a pillar of stability and global cooperation.
In an apparent reference to the United States, Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest ranking official, said in his speech to the assembly on Friday that “the rise in unilateral and protectionist measures such as tariff hikes,” was slowing economic growth. By contrast, Mr. Li said, China had “consistently opened its door wider to the world.”
On Tuesday, he said that Beijing would no longer claim trade benefits reserved for developing nations at the World Trade Organization. Analysts said the announcement was intended to show China backing fairer trade at a time when the Trump administration was doing the opposite by weaponizing tariffs.
On climate, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, told a U.N. summit by video link on Wednesday that Beijing would commit to a detailed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. Mr. Xi said that going “green and low carbon” was the “trend of our time,” and he criticized countries that were “acting against” that transition, a not-so-veiled swipe at the United States.
The contrast could not be greater. Mr. Xi’s pledge was made a day after Mr. Trump had derided climate change as the “greatest con job” that was “made by stupid people.”
The back-to-back pledges crystallized Beijing’s strategy: to position itself as an antidote to “America First.” Beijing calls its approach “true multilateralism,” which involves rhetorically embracing international organizations and treaties shunned by Mr. Trump like the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord.
The goal is to persuade other countries that China is a “moral righteous actor” so that they are more likely to take their cues from Beijing and not Washington, said Dylan Loh, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
“They’re being opportunistic,” Mr. Loh said. “It’s clear that there are pockets of spaces where they see the United States leaving a vacuum in leadership, such as on climate issues, and that is where China is stepping up its game.”
Whether China is doing enough to make a difference, or simply clearing the low bar of expectations set by the Trump administration’s retreat from climate science and global commitments, is an open question.
Take Mr. Xi’s climate targets. Experts say China would need to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from peak levels over the next decade for there to be a realistic chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, the main goal of the Paris climate accord. What they got instead from China, the world’s top polluting nation, was a pledge to cut between 7 and 10 percent.
“The headline target announced by President Xi has disappointed environmentalists and falls short of the climate leadership the world urgently needs,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Mr. Li held out hope that China would eventually exceed its targets on the backs of its growing electric vehicle and wind and solar energy industries.
China has long resisted making more ambitious climate pledges, saying such commitments would stunt its economic growth.
There is a similar tension in how China defines itself as a developing country, a description that reinforces its ties to the world’s less developed nations, even as its nearly $19 trillion economy is already the world’s second largest.
Mr. Li’s trade pledge on Tuesday — saying China would no longer seek certain benefits at the W.T.O. — appeared aimed at narrowing that gap. Such benefits include being given more time to carry out trade agreements, for instance.
But Li Yihong, China’s top envoy to the trade body, told reporters in Geneva that China would “always be a part of the developing world.”
The United States has long criticized China for failing to uphold promises it made when it joined the W.T.O. in 2001, and the Trump administration argues that “developing nation” status has long allowed China to game global trading rules.
“China is trying to have its cake and eat it, too,” said Stephen Olson, a former U.S. trade negotiator and a senior visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. “It does not want to lose its ‘membership card’ in the Global South, which it aspires to lead.”
The change in policy should not deflect from some of China’s objectionable trade practices, Mr. Olson added, including its subsidizing of Chinese exports that make goods produced elsewhere in the world less competitive.
Berry Wang contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.