This just in: You can't trust China.
Mind you, I'm not talking about Chinese people in general. The citizens of Taiwan are also Chinese, after all, and they are not only an American ally but a modern, prosperous, mostly free-market nation. And I'm not talking about the individual subjects (for citizens, they are not) of the People's Republic of China. Those subjects are like people anywhere; some are upstanding and some aren't; some will deal straight with you while others will try to rip you off. No, I'm talking about the government of the mainland, the People's Republic of China, by which I mean the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leader, Xi Jinping, who has amassed more personal power than any Chinese leader since Chairman Mao.
You can't trust the CCP. So when the Chinese government - the CCP - announces a huge new carbon-emission control program to help deal with climate change, you can color me extremely skeptical.
China will accelerate the development of a carbon emissions control system to help it achieve its goal of reaching a peak in the emissions of the climate-warming gases by 2030, the cabinet said on Friday.
Beijing's energy policies have so far focused on "energy and carbon intensity" - energy and emissions involved in producing a unit of economic output - effectively tying its targets to overall economic growth.
Under a work plan announced by the State Council, a "dual-control" system will come into force during the 2026-2030 five-year plan period. Over that time intensity will remain the main measure, but total emissions controls will supplement it, and the focus will shift to emission controls thereafter.
Greenpeace welcomed Friday's move as a step towards decoupling of climate targets from economic growth.
I recognize the substance of China's claim here. Why? Because when I was a kid, working summers in my uncle's livestock auction barn, I shoveled a lot of it. The CCP is talking a good game, but there's virtually no chance it's true. Here's why.
China is building new coal-fired power plants at an incredible rate. According to Carbon Brief's 2023 report, China is responsible for 95 percent of worldwide coal plant construction. They need electricity, and they need it fast, and while one can scarcely blame them for raising their generation capacity as efficiently as possible, it's hard to reconcile that with their professed concern about carbon emissions.
China can't afford any of this. China's economy is moribund. Their population is on the edge of a demographic precipice. Facing a major housing crisis that will slam their economy into a cement wall soon, along with an aging population and their increasing bellicosity in the Pacific leading to them spending far more on the Chinese People's Liberation Army forces than they can afford, there's no way they can add an expensive, climate-change-based carbon reduction to all that - and their priorities, let's be honest, aren't going to be on climate change in any case.
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And finally:
China can't be trusted. China under the Chinese Communist Party is a land of fakery, where appearances are never matched by substance. They paint over bare hillsides to give the illusion of lush plant growth. They build fake libraries with no books. And most of their "green" efforts to date have been, likewise, fake. China is, literally, the land of fakes, and their "green" energy efforts along with their wink-and-nod claims about climate concerns are no exception.
It's not just emissions. You can't drink the water in most of China; in 2008 I spent a few days in Shanghai, and the company I was working with put us up in the Crowne Plaza Pudong - a lovely, fairly luxurious Western-style hotel. There were water bottles on the bathroom sink, replaced every day because the tap water was not safe to drink or even to brush your teeth with. You have to be careful what and where you eat in China, lest you be fed something spiced with "gutter oil," or oil transported in tankers previously used to transport industrial chemicals - and then not cleaned.China is the land of fakes.
So, when China's government, by which I mean the CCP, announces an ambitious new carbon-emissions goal, there is very little chance they mean it. They will claim progress, they will publish reports, they will seek the adulation of climate-change hand-wringers in the West, and all of it will be a sham. Their coal plants will keep running, their military buildup will continue, and the air quality in Chinese cities will remain horrible - in other words, business as usual in the Middle Kingdom.
China claims they are concerned with carbon emissions and climate change. Don't believe them - they aren't.
