Zhou Hongchun, DRC
China has made its historical, fundamental and crucial contribution to the adoption of Paris Agreement, which has formed a top-down mode to enable various countries to make their own decisions on addressing climate change. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China played an important role in reducing carbon intensity through intensified structural adjustment and industrial prioritization. In the period ahead, China needs to positively push forward issues relating to solving overcapacity by concentrating on controlling newly-added capacity and eliminating inefficient ones, raising quality and efficiency, transformation and upgrading as well as low-carbon development with the aim of achieving the goals of energy conservation and emission reduction set by the 13th Five-Year Plan. On the one hand, the consumption of coals must by strictly controlled, and the clean and efficient utilization of coals should be promoted and on the other hand, efforts should be made to innovate new mode for the development and utilization of new energy and renewable resources. The launch of South-South cooperation concerning climate change and the One Belt and One Road Initiative could provide China with favorable opportunities to respond to the world’s doubts about its peaceful rise and announce that China will never seek its own development at the expense of other countries’ resources and environment. Based on UN Marrakech Conference, China needs to advocate cultural exchanges and integration with China’s civilization concepts, such as addressing climate change, green development and harmony between man and nature to increase the affinity among people of various countries. China needs to incorporate energy conservation and emission reduction, recycling economy, clean utilization of energy, the development and utilization of new energy and renewable energy and addressing global climate changes into the prioritized aspects of One Belt and One Road Initiative for mutual cooperation. In addition, China needs to foster the image of a responsible power through multiple forms of international cooperation.
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