Nearly a third of the carbon emissions in China are resulted from the overseas market demand. Whilst, China is still active in reducing greenhouse gas emission and promoting cooperation with developing countries in combating the climate change.

Since becoming the largest manufacturer in the world, and replacing the United States to become the world's largest carbon emitter in 2007, China has been under pressure from the international community regarding climate negotiations. Some voices even blame China as a culprit.

However, most of these remarks are based on the direct trade in energy, raw materials and other commodities or emission volume resulting from the production processes in China, ignoring the international flow of resources and environmental factors hidden behind a large number of traded manufactured goods and services.

Compared with the direct trade in natural resources such as energy and raw materials, the embodied flow of trade, can reveal the real sources of resource consumption and pollution emissions behind the trade in goods and services.

In other words, the cross-border flow of resources and environment factors (including the total amount of natural resources consumed and pollutants created directly and indirectly in the production process of products or services) through trade activities can reflect the global flow and allocation pattern of resources and environment factors in a more reasonable way.

From this perspective, China is taking a large share of the resource costs and pollution burdens of overseas consumers. Thus, it is an important contributor to the international community rather than a threat. As the world factory and the largest manufacturer in recent decades, China has played a unique role as “resource hub” in the global supply chain, namely, the primary products are imported to and processed in China and then are sold out to overseas markets, especially to developed countries.

A recent study from Peking University shows that, although China's total energy resources exploited volume accounts for 18 percent of the global volume in 2010, ranking the highest in the world. Due to the massive export of energy intensive products, China has become the world third largest exporter in the net volume of embodied energy, which followed after Russian and Saudi Arabia.

Similarly, the rapid growth of China's export volume resulted in a sharp rise in emissions. Specifically, the emission volume serving the overseas market demand has tripled from 0.59 trillion tons in 2001 to 1.97 trillion tons in 2009, which triggered the ratio of emissions for overseas market demand raised from 20.8 percent in 2002 to 31.8 percent in 2007. This means that nearly a third of China's annual production carbon emissions does not serve its own consumers, but meets the needs of foreign consumers.

As a major manufacturing and trading country, China has shouldered tremendous resource costs and environmental burden for global consumers while delivering high-quality and low-cost industrial manufactured goods to the world.

On the other hand, due to its large population and relatively low average income, China's per capita resources consumption is significantly lower than the world average, ranking 93 among 186 nations in 2010, which equals 20 percent of that in comparison with the United States and 25 percent of Japan's volume.

Nevertheless, in response to climate change, China has taken the initiatives to undertake the obligations and actively fulfilled its commitments in improving the efficiency of energy use and reducing emissions.

According to the 2018 Annual Report on China's Policy and Action to Combat Climate Change, China's carbon emission for per unit GDP growth has been reduced by 46 percent compared with that in 2005, reaching the goal of a 40-45 percent reduction target by 2020 ahead of time through its continuous efforts.

As an important contributor to and leading country in global climate governance, China not only actively fulfills its own commitment in carbon reduction, but attaches importance to cooperate with other developing countries in combating climate change.

In 2015, China contributed 20 billion RMB ($2.95 billion) to the establishment of a cooperation fund for developing countries fighting climate change. In 2016, it launched 10 low carbon emission pilot projects, 100 programs designed to moderate climate change, and 1,000 training projects in how to respond to climate change in underdeveloped nations.

Obviously, as the largest developing country, China's historical and per capita emission levels are significantly lower than those of developed countries. Out of the traditional framework of the climate finance system, China has set up "voluntary" and "complementary" climate assistance programs for developing countries, which is the unique contribution China has made to global climate governance and sustainable development.

Liu Yanhong is the associate professor of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Science and the visiting scholar of the University of Exeter.

Guo Chaoxian, is the senior research fellow of the Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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