Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone.

In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

In most cases, Chinese authorities haven’t given any reason for ending or withholding data. But the missing numbers have come as the world’s second biggest economy has stumbled under the weight of excessive debt, a crumbling real-estate market and other troubles—spurring heavy-handed efforts by authorities to control the narrative.

[…] Some data are still publicly available but harder to get. Beijing passed a law in 2021 that caused data providers to make certain information—such as corporate registry data and satellite images—accessible only in mainland China.

[….] Some information that has disappeared defies explanation. Data providing estimates of the size of elementary school toilets stopped being released in 2022, then resumed publication in February. Official soy sauce production data stopped appearing in May 2021, and hasn’t returned. [Source]

Another reminder of the unreliability of China’s official statistics came in March after the U.S. announced that its embassies around the world would cease publishing data about local air quality. This long-running transparency initiative began in 2008 when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing shared real-time information about toxic levels of PM2.5 microparticles in the capital’s air. The Chinese Foreign Ministry later complained that because the U.S. data conflicted with China’s (which measured only larger PM10 particles), they were causing “confusion” and undesirable “social consequences.” Under pressure, the Chinese government eventually established its own PM2.5 monitoring system, admitted that air pollution was a significant problem, and took greater corrective measures. However, there is still insufficient transparency in this domain. A recent paper in the journal Nature revealed notable discrepancies between China’s annual and monthly official statistics regarding CO2 emissions between 2014 and 2020 when calculating near real-time estimates of those emissions.

Shaky statistics such as those help Chinese state media’s external propaganda. In an article from March titled “Fact Check: What Western media get wrong about China’s economy,” Xinhua argued that “Western media’s relentless fixation on peddling narratives of China’s economic doom demonstrates their entrenched bias and agenda-driven reporting. Contrary to those claims, […] key economic indicators showed significant improvement” in China’s economy. Western reporting aside, China’s official annual GDP growth rates have been widely seen as misleading, generating doubts about the true state of the Chinese economy. In March, Nicholas R. Lardy and Tianlei Huang at the Peterson Institute for International Economics noted that while China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has improved the quality of certain macroeconomic data—such as fixed asset investment, international trade in goods, household income and expenditure, and value-added in financial services—it continues to selectively withhold other important information:

The paradox of China’s economic data thus lies in its dual character: The disappearance of certain data points, sometimes those related to economic weakness, raise concerns about the authority’s selective transparency. Yet at the same time, Beijing has better aligned its data with international standards and improved their quality. While its push for quality improvements shows its commitment to more reliable statistics, its selective withholding of information inevitably undermines confidence in the overall picture. If Beijing really wants to build trust in its economic data, it needs to ensure greater transparency, even though some statistics may expose vulnerabilities in its economy. [Source]

Last November, Vincent Brussee published an article in The China Quarterly about the “missingness” of Chinese policy documents. Among the hundreds of thousands of policy documents he scraped from official sources between 2021 and 2023, nearly 20 percent were unavailable two years after their publication. Within the latter group, 10 percent were unavailable due to issues uploading the websites, 7.7 percent due to broken links, and 1.9 percent had been intentionally deleted. Brussee described the implications of these findings for researchers’ knowledge base of China:

As this paper demonstrates, there is significant variation in policy transparency and document availability over time. Transparency originally improved between 2008 and the mid-2010s. Today, however, transparency is in decline in several fields, especially in fields where there are related geopolitical tensions. There is also significant variation among types of documents, with top-level policies seeing significantly higher disclosure rates than lower-level documents. Variation among topics appears primarily in the extent to which a topic is related to national security or citizens’ daily lives. Finally, disappearance of documents is a real challenge for research. Thus, studies working with policy data must be open about how they mitigate missingness.

[…] This paper invites broader reflection on the fragility of our knowledge base and the use of convenient datasets in China studies. Policy documents are not propaganda, yet the fact that all these data are available to “us” also suggests that their availability serves a political purpose. The developments highlighted throughout this paper suggests that this curation of information sources is only likely to intensify. Understanding the context in which these sources are produced and what can – and, more importantly, cannot – be learned from them is crucial. [Source]

CDT has covered numerous incidents of Chinese sources publishing, and often later censoring, official data in ways that many netizens deem questionable. The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples from the past two years.

• January 2025: After online sleuths found numerous examples of data fraud in clinical trials for generic drugs in China, China’s National Medical Products Administration claimed the data irregularities were simply “editing errors” and then blocked access to the data.
• December 2024: Viral video and transcripts of two unusually critical speeches about the accuracy of official statistics on the Chinese economy—by economists Gao Shanwen and Fu Peng, respectively—were deleted from multiple Chinese social media platforms, and the economists’ WeChat accounts were shut down.
• August 2024: After the State Council Information Office hosted a series of press conferences intended to showcase government accomplishments using optimistic statistics, some netizens sardonically mentioned “launching Sputniks” or “10,000 catties per mu,” phrases that reference the insanely optimistic targets and grossly exaggerated rice and grain yields reported by localities during the Great Leap Forward.
• July 2024: Public access to a tanker-truck tracking app was suspended after investigative reports revealed that cooking oil was being transported in fuel-oil tanker trucks that were not washed between transports.
• April 2024: The NBS announcement of a high nationwide average per-capita disposable income led many netizens to mock this “daily dose of humor” and wonder, “When can I expect to receive my portion of this increase?”
• February 2024: A Guangzhou research center’s public opinion poll on the state of the private economy, the outlook for employment, and current incomes showed the largest drop in public satisfaction in 30 years. A post about the poll was deleted from WeChat.
• August 2023: After youth unemployment hit a record 21.3 percent, the government stopped publishing data on the subject and online censors targeted discussion of unemployment.
• July 2023: A report on provincial cremation statistics was removed from Zhejiang’s government website and discussion of the statistics were censored on Q&A site Zhihu, after the central government stopped publishing cremation data.
• June 2023: A series of infographics from Sohu News highlighting poverty, youth unemployment, and other social issues, using statistics mostly drawn from government sources, were scrubbed from Weibo.
• May 2023: Media outlets reported that China’s top financial data provider, Wind Information, began restricting foreign access to its data in 2022, and company information databases Qichacha and Tianyancha also shut down access for foreign users.
• January 2023: After the NBS announced China’s sharp population decline, the state-affiliated Beijing Business Today reported on a survey purporting to show that “80% of university students would like to have two children,” drawing online mockery about the misleading results.

For more on this topic, see CDT’s archives related to data and statistics, and our interview with Jeremy Wallace about data manipulation in China. (This CDT post from May 2024 also contains a related timeline about censorship of economic content in China, which includes but is not limited to content about official statistics.)

The spill happened on Feb. 18 when a tailings dam that holds acidic waste from a copper mine in the north of the country collapsed, according to investigators from the Engineering Institution of Zambia.

The collapse allowed some 50 million liters of waste containing concentrated acid, dissolved solids and heavy metals to flow into a stream that links to the Kafue River, Zambia’s most important waterway, the engineering institution said.

[…] About 60% of Zambia’s 20 million people live in the Kafue River basin and depend on it in some way as a source of fishing, irrigation for agriculture and water for industry. The river supplies drinking water to about five million people, including in the capital, Lusaka.

[…] A smaller acid waste leak from another Chinese-owned mine in Zambia’s copper belt was discovered days after the Sino-Metals accident, and authorities have accused the smaller mine of attempting to hide it.

Local police said a mine worker died at that second mine after falling into acid and alleged that the mine continued to operate after being instructed to stop its operations by authorities. Two Chinese mine managers have been arrested, police said. [Source]

The AP reported that dead fish washed up on the banks of the Kafue River 100 kilometers downstream from the mine. Zambian environmental activist Chilekwa Mumba said, “It is an environmental disaster really of catastrophic consequences.” Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema called for help from experts and called the leak “a crisis that threatens people and wildlife along the Kafue.” Zambia’s Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation also feared its “devastating consequences,” including the contamination of groundwater that would poison crops. Zambian authorities shut down operations at the two Chinese mines where leaks had occurred. Olga Manda in Lusaka at The Continent described how this incident fits into the broader political dynamic between the Zambian and Chinese governments:

This is an unusually strong stance from Zambia’s government, which enjoys close economic relations with China. The Asian superpower holds at least $4.1-billion of Zambia’s $13-billion external debt and reportedly funds at least 26 copper projects in the country, bringing in up to $260-million in taxes a year. This buys certain privileges – including, all too often, meekness from public officials.

In recent years, President Hakainde Hichilema has walked a delicate path with China as he has attempted to renegotiate debts to more sustainable terms. Chinese reluctance was a major factor in why Zambia could not reach a restructuring agreement with its G20 creditors until June 2023, after defaulting in 2020. While payments to all other creditors remained frozen during the impasse, China received a $80-million payment. Zambian authorities say it was accidentally sent.

The February disaster has put Beijing on the defensive in Lusaka. China’s deputy ambassador said independent consultants would be brought in to assess the impact of the pollution. An official Chinese delegation also flew into the capital over the weekend to manage the fallout. After travelling to the disaster site, the delegation – whose composition has not been disclosed – held a closed door meeting with Zambian officials, including Nzovu, the irate water minister, on Thursday afternoon. Details of the meeting have not been made public. [Source]

Jevans Nyabiage from the South China Morning Post shared experts’ views on how this environmental disaster might affect the future of Zambia-China relations:

Emmanuel Matambo, a [Zambian] research director at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies, said the environmental catastrophe was certain to harm ties.

“The acidic waste spill into the Kafue River will set back Zambia-China relations in a very damaging way,” Matambo said.

[…] “While [concern about environmental hazards associated with Chinese investment in African mining] had died down around the 2010s, the Kafue spillage will revive it, and will shine a very unflattering light on Chinese investment in Zambia,” he said.

[…] But [Iva Pesa, an assistant professor in contemporary history at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands,] was hopeful about future relations between Zambia and China after the recent acid spill. She said while the incident would strain ties, “I do not think it will mean a break”.

“Chinese investments are crucial to the Zambian economy and I suspect they will continue,” Pesa said. [Source]

Tension between Zambians and Chinese mining companies is not new. In 2010, Chinese managers of a mining company shot 11 Zambian workers who protested poor working conditions. Two years later, after alleging that their employer failed to pay them, workers at that same mine killed one Chinese manager and injured two others. At the time, Zambian politician Michael Sata ran a presidential campaign to support workers’ rights against abuses by Chinese companies, but after winning the election in 2011, he softened his tough stance. Even today, with China continuing to make significant investments in Zambia’s mining industry, Zambia has limited leverage to push back against the negative externalities of China’s engagement. James Palmer at Foreign Policy described Zambia’s dependence on China in the global copper industry:

Copper is a global boom industry, with prices at record highs—and U.S. demand is growing. China is the world’s biggest copper importer, and Zambia is among the top 10 producers. (Copper makes up more than 70 percent of the country’s exports.) Still, Zambia sits low on the value chain, producing relatively low-grade copper and lacking advanced facilities; China plays a dominant role in mining and refinement.

[…] Zambia’s copper production has suffered from price plunges in the past—but the country is now looking to expand significantly, mostly with Chinese investment. Western firms are still competitive in Zambia, with the United States investing $4 billion in the Lobito Corridor project last year to challenge China’s influence. China responded to the project by promising $5 billion in copper investment in Zambia by 2031.

[…] What may vanish is some of the Chinese demand for copper. Amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s manufacturing push, Chinese copper smelters are working overtime. Meanwhile, the country’s real estate industry, which drives copper demand, hasn’t bottomed out of its crisis. [Source]

Following the pollution incident, Chinese state media published positive coverage of China’s activities in Zambia. In late February, a China Daily article touted a Zambian business and cultural exchange event in Beijing under the headline, “Zambia seeks new chapter of cooperation with China.” A Xinhua article published last week, “Chinese enterprises donate relief supplies to Zambian flood victims,” emphasized Chinese goodwill towards Zambia: the Chargé d’Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Zambia Wang Sheng “said the donation exemplified the commitment of the Chinese community and businesses in Zambia to fulfilling their social responsibilities, which have always been among their core values,” and the president of the Zambia Chinese Association Zhang Jian said the donation “demonstrated the genuine care and compassion of the overseas Chinese community.” The donations were valued at just under $50,000. The following day, the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation announced it would invest $1.4 billion to upgrade the Tanzania-Zambia railway, a major transportation route for copper exports from central Africa. Over the weekend, Xinhua announced that China and Zambia had signed an agreement outlining new Chinese economic and technical aid projects.

None of those articles mentioned the acid waste spill in Zambia’s Kafue River. But as China Media Project noted this week, “Chinese media outlets have taken the unusual step of more openly covering a toxic thallium contamination in Hunan’s Leishuei River, exposing a crisis kept under wraps for a full week.” Previously, Chinese government censors have directed media outlets to avoid covering sensitive issues of water pollution.

At least 126 people were known to have been killed and 188 injured on the Tibetan side, state broadcaster CCTV reported. No deaths have been reported in Nepal or elsewhere.

The quake was so strong part of the terrain around the epicentre slipped as much as 1.6 metres (5 feet 3 inches) over a distance of 80 km (50 miles), according to an analysis by the United States Geological Survey

[…] An initial survey showed 3,609 homes had been destroyed in the Shigatse region, home to 800,000 people, state media reported late on Tuesday. More than 14,000 rescue personnel had been deployed.

More than 46,500 people affected by the quake have been relocated, and 484 tourists in Tingri have been safely transported to the city of Shigatse, local officials said at a press conference on Wednesday.

[…] As of noon on Wednesday, 646 aftershocks with magnitudes of up to 4.4 continued to jolt the area around the epicentre. [Source]

In the People’s Daily, Tuesday’s lead report on page 1 presented Xi Jinping’s instructions for the official response to the earthquake, which stated that Xi “ordered all-out rescue efforts to save lives and minimize casualties” (the report did not mention the number of casualties). The government raised its national emergency response level to the highest tier, and Vice-Premier Zhang Guoqing arrived in Tibet on Wednesday to oversee the relief operation. Over 3,400 rescuers and hundreds of medical workers were also deployed, although the freezing temperatures make the prospect of survival difficult for people trapped under rubble or without shelter. One Dingri resident stated, “In the worst-hit villages, 80-90% of the houses have collapsed.” A tourist in the town of Lhatse, 65 kilometres from the epicentre, said he saw “the buildings had cracked open”. What’s on Weibo’s Manya Koetse posted a thread on X showing that citizens, celebrities, and companies shared their sympathies for the victims of the earthquake on Chinese social media and announced large donations to rescue efforts. She also noted that a fake, AI-generated image of a Tibetan child in the rubble spread online.

The Tibetan diaspora and Tibetan government-in-exile expressed a more critical attitude. Political leader Sikyong Penpa Tsering said the widespread damage points to “serious questions about the true effectiveness” of Beijing’s repeated assertions of poverty alleviation in the region, and he pointed to images from the disaster zone that “starkly highlight the discrepancy between the PRC’s narrative and the reality.” Many in the Tibetan diaspora fear that the death toll is much higher than announced by the Chinese government. Some shared messages expressing their frustration and powerlessness at the natural and political disasters afflicting their community. Others, referencing the Chinese Red Cross’ mismanagement of donated funds for relief efforts during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, lamented the difficulty of providing direct aid to victims and their families.

Tibetan diaspora groups have also criticized the Chinese government’s attempts to popularize "Xizang," the Sinicized term for Tibet, in media coverage of the earthquake as yet another push to erase Tibetan linguistic identity. Tsering Shakya, an academic at University of British Columbia, wrote a blog post in Mediapart on Wednesday arguing that “China’s call for the international community to adopt the term ‘Xizang’ reflects colonial practices of renaming territories to assert its dominance [and…] marginalize Tibetan voices, heritage, and sovereignty.” In the wake of earthquake, the Tibet Action Institute, Free Tibet Campaign, Students for a Free Tibet, and other Tibetan organizations published a joint statement calling on the international community to help the victims without supporting the Chinese government’s colonial policies:

At this critical moment, the safety and welfare of those affected by the earthquake must be given full priority. To this end, we call on world governments to provide support and oversight to all of China’s disaster relief efforts in order to ensure impacted Tibetan communities receive the required aid and assistance. They must also ensure the Chinese government does not use its earthquake response as a pretext to further its colonial policies in Tibet as it did following the 2010 earthquake in Jyekundo སྐྱེ་དགུ་མདོ། in Yushul ཡུས་ཤུལ། in the eastern Tibetan province of Kham ཁམས།. They should also impress upon Beijing that it must not punish Tibetans who share information or attempt to contact family and friends about the impact of the earthquake or its response.

We further call on the international community – especially governments and media organisations – to use Tibetan place names in any statements or reporting, both as a matter of historical accuracy and respect for the cultural identity of the Tibetan people. This includes, for example, using Shigatse instead of the Chinese name Xigaze, and Tibet instead of the Chinese name Xizang. The Chinese government is engaged in a campaign to literally erase the word Tibet from the map in an effort to reduce recognition of Tibet as an entity separate from China. [Source]

The earthquake and its deadly impact also serve as a strong warning against risky energy projects in the region. China’s “water-industrial complex” is converging on Tibet, as plans proliferate for hydropower dams in ecologically and politically sensitive areas of the plateau, despite recurring natural disasters such as Tuesday’s earthquake. The Chinese government recently gave approval to move forward with construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the lower part of the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, the same area that suffered a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in 2017. Highlighting these risks, activist Tenzin Yangzom stated this week that the Chinese government “has zero regard for the well-being and lives of Tibetans living under their rule.” On Wednesday, the Tibetan Review described in more detail how the recent earthquake “raises a big question mark on China’s Yarlung Tsangpo super dam project”:

India has already voiced much concern over this mega-dam on the Tibetan plateau in view of the perceived serious implications for its national security as well as on its and Bangladesh’s ecology, affecting millions. Hydrologists have flagged the possibilities of both a water scarcity downstream and severe flash floods, especially if China wants to leverage “a water bomb” during a war.

[…] To make matters worse, […said geostrategist Brahma Chellaney], the behemoth dam is being built in a seismically active area, which raises the spectre of a geological disaster. Tibet’s southeastern region is earthquake-prone because it sits on the geological fault line where the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate collide. Building the huge dam close to this fault line makes the project potentially a ticking water bomb for downstream communities.

[…] While maintaining a veil of secrecy over its super-dam project since it was conceived, Beijing has asserted a “legitimate right” to dam the river in a border area. This is in keeping with its longstanding claim that it has “indisputable sovereignty” over waters on its side of the international boundary, including the right to divert as much shared water as it wishes for its legitimate needs. [Source]

If completed, 1.2 million residents living nearby dam projects could be dislocated from their homes, communities, and livelihoods. Religious and sacred sites serving communities will also be destroyed.

Almost 80 per cent of dams studied are large or mega dams (\>100MW), which carry the most significant risk to the Tibetan civilization, environmental sustainability, and the climate. However, over half the dams (60%) are either in proposal or preparation stage, presenting opportunities to change course.

A truly sustainable pathway for the energy plan must account for the climate, social, environment, and geopolitical costs of hydropower and change course. No plan is sustainable without the consent, participation and co-management of local communities.

Tibetans, who remain among the most politically marginalized in China, should not bear the highest cost to power China’s industrial centers. Any long-term solution must involve a political solution where Tibetan people enjoy the right to freely decide how their natural resources are used. This begins with the PRC entering into a meaningful dialogue with representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. [Source]

Speaking to French newspaper Libération about the report, ICT researcher and advocacy officer Tenzin Palmo stated, “We wanted to show what was happening in this inaccessible border area in the west of the country, but also to reveal the projects of the Chinese authorities who are trying by all means to hide information, to harass civil society, all while engaging in a greenwashing operation around these dams.” Other groups have provided related evidence. Last month, Turquoise Roof and Tibet Watch published a report titled, “The risks of China’s dangerous dam-building in Tibet: the impacts of China’s move upstream on the Machu/Yellow River,” which highlighted the threat of geological disasters and environmental problems:

For the first time, China’s construction of hydropower dams is reaching upstream to the sources of Asia’s great wild rivers in Tibet, with at least three major new dams on the upper Machu (Chinese: Huang He) river. Chinese scientists have warned of the risks of heavy infrastructure construction in a seismically unstable region where river systems are increasingly unpredictable due to climate change.

[…] While China can point to its solar and hydro projects in Tibet to signal a green transition, the smart grid is currently orientated to fossil fuels, which may reveal a slower, less substantial shift than these projects imply. Although hydroelectric power is technically renewable, the large-scale hydropower projects underway in Tibet have complex environmental and social impacts, including ecosystem disruption and displacement of communities.

The first major dam to be built upriver on the Machu, the Yangkhil (Yangqu) hydropower station, has devastated an entire community. Accounts and images from eyewitnesses in this report documents how Tibetans have been compelled to dismantle their own homes and an important monastery has been emptied and destroyed. China removed the monastery from a protected heritage list before beginning demolition to make way for a dam that Chinese engineers boast is constructed by AI-driven robots. [Source]

In the Made in China Journal last month, James Leibold wrote about the Tibet-Aid Project, which he describes as a CCP initiative that pairs Tibet’s administrative units with inland government actors in order to extend Beijing’s settler-colonial enterprise and fortify Han dominance in the region. Among the Tibet-Aid cadres championed in CCP propaganda are Han engineers committed to transforming Tibet’s physical landscape through “civilizing” infrastructure projects. Leibold argued, “By unleashing a new legion of Han officials and settlers on to the Tibetan Plateau, Xi seeks to complete the discursive, demographic, and cultural integration of Tibet into a new Han empire.” In this excerpt, he describes how Han migration and infrastructure-building erode local Tibetan sovereignty:

Most of the Han people living and working in Tibet today are descendants of former Tibet-Aid cadres. In a recent survey of 300-plus Han retirees who had worked in Tibet, 49 per cent had a parent who had previously worked in Tibet, with one-quarter of those born in Tibet (Zhou and Du 2023: 83). They are called ‘second’ or ‘third-generation Tibetans’ (藏二代 or 藏三代) in Chinese and now make up the backbone of the party-state’s governing and economic apparatuses in the region. According to officials, they are the ‘strongest source of strength’ for forging what Xi Jinping has called the ‘collective consciousness’ (共同体意识) of the Han-centric nation/race (Thondup and Tsring 2023). By claiming Tibetan identity, albeit an altered one, Han migrants are engaging in a common settler-colonial strategy—what Lorenzo Veracini (2010: 46) calls the discursive erasure of ‘indigenous specific alterity’.

Han colonists live a highly fluid existence in the TAR and their roots are impermanent. Due to health concerns, they split their time between apartments in lower-elevation cities, chiefly in Sichuan, and their posts on the plateau. China’s mega-infrastructure building in the TAR—roads, airports, railways, power and telecommunication lines, etcetera—serves as conduits for Han mobility, allowing colonial subjects to move more comfortably and smoothly through ‘harsh’ Tibetan spaces while imprinting the landscape with Han norms that ultimately efface Tibetan sovereignty. The 1,629-kilometre Chengdu-to-Lhasa high-speed railway is of ‘immense strategic value’, a 2018 blog post asserts, as it will not only facilitate military logistics, but also allow the vibrant economy and Han-dominated population of the Sichuan Basin to ‘more easily spread and radiate into the Tibet region’ when it is completed in 2030 (Sohu 2018). [Source]

Similar dynamics are playing out in other borderland regions, such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. In an article for Atmos, Nithin Coca and Patrick Wack described how state-affiliated energy companies have built massive solar plants in Xinjiang that greenwash rights abuses against local Uyghur communities. Uyghur activists argue that these projects are part of longstanding efforts to Sinicize the region and exploit its resources while further colonizing their homeland through Han migration. This also plays out in the realm of Tibetan language politics, as the Chinese government has imposed Sinicization policies to force Tibetans to use Mandarin instead of their local languages. For more on this topic, see CDT’s recent interview with Gerald Roche about the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages, which face unique challenges in the face of both Mandarin and Standard Tibetan. Other interviews can be found in CDT’s series on Tibet.

More broadly it was a mistake for western countries to insist that the final draft deal – and particularly the draft financials – not be unveiled until the penultimate day. To the global south this, rightly, made it look like a fait accompli. My negotiating team argued vociferously for drafts to be made public far earlier. But that was not to be.

This approach differed from other leading nations that were expected to make increased financial contributions. China spent the full two weeks coordinating their response to the negotiations in a regimented fashion with the G77 group of the world’s poorest nations. The Chinese were willing to offer more if others did so too (but the others didn’t). Their target of $500bn for the industrialised world’s contributions alone still would not suffice to limit global warming to 1.5C, but it was a more acceptable minimum figure – something publicly acknowledged by Kenya and several other African nations. [Source]

Josh Gabbatiss, a climate policy correspondent at Carbon Brief, wrote an explanatory thread on Bluesky summarizing the Global South’s anger at the part of the deal relating to the finance goal:

IN SUMMARY:

Developing countries wanted:

Mobilisation: $1.3tn
Provision: $600bn
Investment: ⛔️

They got:

Mobilisation: $300bn
Provision: 🤷‍♂️
Investment: $1.3tn (maybe)

— Josh Gabbatiss (@joshgabbatiss.bsky.social) Nov 25, 2024 at 10:42

China sent nearly 1,000 delegates to the conference, slightly less than the COP28, making it the fifth-largest delegation of the nearly 200 countries that participated. Leading the Chinese delegation was vice minister of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment Zhao Yingmin. This year, Liu Zhenmin replaced Xie Zhenhua as China’s climate envoy. Ding Xuexiang, vice premier of the State Council and Xi Jinping’s special representative at COP29, declared that China had already provided and mobilized over $24.5 billion in climate finance for developing countries since 2016. But as Fermín Koop and Niu Yuhan reported for Dialogue Earth, China’s climate finance responsibilities still came under scrutiny during the conference:

[C]alls for China to shoulder greater financial responsibility have grown louder. Several delegates argued that classifications dating back to 1992, which label China as a developing nation, are outdated. New analysis by Carbon Brief estimated that China’s historical emissions have caused more warming than the combined emissions of the 27-member European Union, further fuelling arguments that China should contribute more as a global economic powerhouse.

China has resisted these pressures. Zhao Yingmin, head of the Chinese delegation, told the media that it is neither legal nor reasonable for some countries to refuse to recognise that China is a developing country, and that this undermines the mutual trust and cooperation between the contracting parties.

He sought to emphasise that all negotiations must follow the terms of the Paris Agreement, which imposes financial obligations only on developed country parties, but encourages other parties to provide support voluntarily: “China’s South-South cooperation is voluntary, contrasting with the mandatory obligations of developed nations.”

Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, warned that pushing China to contribute to climate finance on the same basis as developed nations could be counterproductive. “That would risk harming trust and reinforcing divisions,” he said, advocating for a focus on unity and pragmatic collaboration instead. [Source]

In a sign of the support that China appears to have among large parts of the Global South, one unnamed African negotiator told Africa Report that the African group does not want to alienate China by lobbying for it to be included among the new polluters and thereby be required to contribute greater financing. Instead, China will remain among the countries providing voluntary contributions to the climate finance agreements. Asked about the results of COP29, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday: “China calls on developed countries to earnestly fulfill their obligations and responsibilities of providing funding support to developing countries to boost global climate actions. China will continue to enhance South-South cooperation and provide as much support as we can for the climate response effort of fellow developing countries”

An elephant in the room was the incoming U.S. presidential administration of Donald Trump, whose America First policy agenda when it comes to climate includes pulling out of the Paris Agreement and reigniting a trade war with China that will likely spike the price of electric vehicles and other green-technology products. Governments and activists wonder to what extent China can fill the void left by the U.S. Chinese officials may have had these challenges in mind when they emphasised the need for an energy transition and multilateral cooperation, as Carbon Brief noted in its list of key outcomes of the COP29 as they relate to China:

At the South-South Cooperation on Climate Change forum hosted by China, Carbon Brief heard Huang saying that the world needs multilateral cooperation in combating climate change, but that “green trade barriers” prevent better cooperation, especially for developing countries.

Wang Can, director of the department of environmental planning and management at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, explained to Carbon Brief that the “green trade barriers” are “bans and tariffs…mainly from the US” on renewable technology products. He added:

“Technology development is at this stage now, countries could adopt and deploy them quicker. The gap in the deployment scale required to meet climate targets was caused by trade barriers in the west.”

[…] This desire from China-based academics for international cooperation was intertwined with an overarching official message; Carbon Brief heard from multiple Chinese senior officials and high-level climate advisors that China is committed to the energy transition but cannot accelerate it globally alone. [Source]

[Francisco] Chiroque and the Peruvian fishing industry blame the hundreds of gigantic Chinese fishing ships patrolling the edge of Peru’s national waters. Peru’s squid catch is down 70% so far this year, which the fishing industry says is a result of the industrial-scale fishing that Chinese companies have brought to seas normally plied by individuals in small boats, sometimes called artisan fishermen.

“They fish and fish, day and night,” said Chiroque, 49 years old, the head of the squid-fisherman association in Paita, a city on Peru’s far northern Pacific coast that is home to its squid-fishing industry. “The plundering is awful.”

[…] “It’s unfair competition,” said Elsa Vega, president of an association of Peru’s artisan fishermen. “It’s like David and Goliath.”

[…Segundo Meza, a 54-year-old squid fisherman,] now spends his days helping to care for his grandson. The boy’s father, also a fisherman, left to work on a blueberry farm. To save money, his family stopped paying utility bills and skips breakfast. 

[…] Some fishermen here say they have seen the Chinese ships fishing inside Peru’s waters, accusing them of shutting off their tracking devices to avoid detection. [Source]

In September, Peruvian authorities seized about 1.3 tons of illegally harvested shark fins, a delicacy in China and some other countries, amid plummeting global shark populations due to overfishing. But Chinese DWF practices are by no means limited to Peru. Analyzing the impact of China’s fishing policies on West Africa last month at Global Voices, Ruohan Xie and Desire Nimubona wrote that Chinese fleets off the coast of Senegal are devastating local fishing economies and throwing many fisherman out of work:

In Senegal, about 220,000 people work in the fishing industry; 90 percent are artisanal fishers, while the remaining 10 percent work on foreign vessels, joint ventures, or local industrial trawlers. 

Now, [young Senegalese fishermen Moktar Diop and Mohamed Jawo] must reach remote waters to get fish, as much of the coast is occupied by Chinese vessels. The competition between Chinese vessels and local boats has become impossible, they say, and, in a country where the jobless rate exceeds 23 percent, many young people are losing hope.

[…] According to the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, illegal fishing has resulted in the loss of over 300,000 artisanal or traditional fishing jobs in West Africa. Consequently, many people are forced to seek work in other industries or even abroad. Many young people, unable to stay in their hometowns, try to migrate to Europe through Morocco, risking their lives along the way.

[…Those suffering most] are the local small-scale fishermen who, for generations, have relied on the coast to sustain themselves and their families. Mohammed Jawo said: “We have skills, but we watch helplessly in the face of this injustice inflicted on us by contracts that grant our oceans to others who will enrich themselves. We hope that the new Government of Ousmane Sonko will renegotiate these unfair contracts.” [Source]

As Nikkei Asia reported in August, Chinese fishing vessels have also been highly active in waters off the coast of Japan, even after the release of treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant—a policy that was fiercely criticized by the Chinese government, which subsequently banned all imports of Japanese seafood products. Some Chinese vessels brought fish caught in Japanese coastal waters back to China, where it was offloaded and fraudulently sold as “Chinese-sourced.” Some local Japanese fishermen have reported being driven from their own fishing grounds by the aggressive maneuvers of Chinese fishing vessels. In response to China’s growing maritime fishing fleet, the Quad (which includes Japan, the U.S., Australia, and India) plans to launch joint patrols to monitor vessels in the Indo-Pacific and counter illegal fishing.

Facing accusations of unsustainable fishing practices, China has invested heavily in aquaculture in recent years and reduced marine-capture fisheries, resulting in an 18 percent drop in its marine catch from 2015 to 2022, as well as a drop in its total number of DWF vessels. However, China’s DWF output still increased by four percent in 2022, and the decrease in Chinese DWF vessels might be significantly overstated due to the practice of reflagging those vessels. As Ian Urbina, Pete McKenzie, and Milko Schvartzman revealed in a major investigation for The Ocean Outlaw Project in August, China has increasingly employed the tactic of paying to ‘flag in’ their ships so they can operate in other nations’ fishing grounds, giving China “nearshore supremacy”:

In recent years, from South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has been buying its way into restricted national fishing grounds, primarily using a process known as “flagging in.” This method typically involves the use of business partnerships to register foreign ships under the flag of another country, thereby allowing those vessels to fish in that country’s territorial waters.

Chinese companies now control at least 62 industrial fishing vessels that fly the Argentine flag, including the majority of Argentina’s squid fleet. Many of these companies have been tied to a variety of crimes, including dumping fish at sea, turning off their transponders, and engaging in tax evasion and fraud. Trade records show that much of what is caught by these vessels is sent back to China, but some of the seafood is also exported to countries including the United States, Canada, Italy, and Spain.

China now operates almost 250 of these flagged-in vessels in the waters of countries including Micronesia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and Iran.

The size of this hidden fleet was not previously known. Nor was the extent of its illegal behavior, concentration in certain foreign waters or the amount of seafood coming from these ships that winds up in European and American markets. The scope of the armada matters because most countries require vessels to be owned locally to keep profits within the country and make it easier to enforce fishing regulations. Flagging-in undermines those aims, said Duncan Copeland, the former executive director of TMT, a non-profit research organization specializing in maritime crime. And aside from the sovereignty and financial concerns, food security is also undermined by the export of this vital source of affordable protein, added Dyhia Belhabib, a principal investigator at Ecotrust Canada, a charity focused on environmental activism. [Source]

The protests draw urgent attention to China’s extractivist plans that are carving up the Tibetan landscape, risking landslides, earthquakes and food insecurity, and impacting tens of millions living downstream in China, India and elsewhere in Asia. State-owned conglomerates are accelerating the construction of mega dams and associated infrastructure in Tibet despite the inherent dangers of a seismically unstable region where river systems are increasingly unpredictable due to climate change.

For the first time, China’s dambuilding is now reaching upriver to the sources of Asia’s great wild mountain rivers in Tibet in landscapes that were previously among the least disturbed habitats on earth. Tibet is described by Chinese engineers as “the main battlefield of China’s hydropower construction”, while a Chinese chief engineer warned that the process of constructing a dam in the upper reaches of the Drichu river is like building “high-rise blocks on tofu”.

[…] The plans involve the entire population of the area – monks and lay, old and young – being uprooted and displaced in their thousands from villages and monasteries that have flourished upstream in the sacred mountains of Gèndong alongside the Drichu or the upper Yangtze River, the longest and largest river on the Eurasian continent.

[…] The construction of the Kamtok dam risks a cascade of adverse consequences both on the plateau and in China, serving as a reminder that China’s policies in Tibet – where water is regarded as a ‘strategic asset’ by the Communist Party state – affect global climate systems already challenged by food and water insecurity involving glacial melting and erratic monsoon cycles. A leading Tibetan professor based in Beijing has revealed data showing that the rivers of Tibet are becoming more and more unpredictable. [Source]

Protests against the dam began in mid-February in Derge County (also known as Dege) in Sichuan Province, where authorities reportedly arrested over 100 Tibetan Buddhist monks and other residents. Videos of the protests showed black-clad forces pushing around Tibetan monks who were peacefully protesting. Similar dynamics were observed in mid-April, as Tibet Watch reported that the government had already started relocating around 60 households located near another planned hydropower station on the Machu river in Qinghai Province. 

A second report was published by Human Rights Watch and titled, “Educate the Masses to Change Their Minds: China’s Forced Relocation of Rural Tibetans.” The report draws on over 1,000 official Chinese media articles between 2016 and 2023 as well as government publications and academic field studies. It shows that Chinese media reports in many cases contradict official claims that all those relocated gave their consent and instead indicate that participation in “whole-village relocation” programs in Tibet is in effect compulsory:

The official press reports indicate the extreme forms of persuasion—that is, coercion—used by officials to pressure villagers and nomadic people or nomads to agree to whole-village relocation. These methods include repeated home visits; denigrating the intellectual capacity of the villagers to make decisions for themselves; implicit threats of punishment; banning of criticism; and threats of disciplinary action against local officials who fail to meet targets. In some cases, officials of increasing seniority visited families at their homes to gain their “consent,” visits that sometimes were repeated over several years. Some official press reports and videos obtained by Human Rights Watch show officials telling residents that essential services would be cut to their current homes if they did not move. Others showed authorities openly threatening villagers who voiced disagreements about the relocations, accusing them of “spreading rumors” and ordering officials to crack down on such actions “swiftly and resolutely”—implying administrative and criminal penalties. This report includes three case studies that show in detail the timelines, objectives, arguments, and methods used to obtain the “consent” of residents of entire villages to relocate.

[…] Official statistics suggest that between 2000 and 2025, the Chinese authorities will have relocated over 930,000 rural Tibetans (see Appendix I). Most of these relocations—over 709,000 people or 76 percent of these relocations—have taken place since 2016. Among these 709,000 people relocated, 140,000 are moved as part of the whole village relocation drives, 567,000 as part of individual household relocations.

[…] The relocation program in Tibet contravenes international human rights law standards. International law prohibits “forced evictions,” which have been defined as the removal of individuals, families, or communities against their will from their homes or land without access to appropriate forms of legal or other protection. Forced evictions include those that lack meaningful consultation or compensation, and which do not consider “all feasible alternatives” to relocation. Otherwise, lawful evictions must still be carried out in compliance with relevant international human rights law and “in accordance with general principles of reasonableness and proportionality.” [Source]

The report stated that over three million Tibetans have been forced to give up their traditional nomadic lifestyles based on yak herding and agriculture, and that “most relocation programs in Tibet move former farmers and pastoralists to areas where they cannot practice their former livelihood and have no choice but to seek work as wage laborers in off-farm industries.” Providing more details from the report, Marrian Zhou from Nikkei Asia highlighted the involuntary nature of the relocations and their detrimental economic effects:

In one case, 200 out of 262 families in a village in the nomadic area of Nagqu initially refused to move almost 1,000 kilometers away. Villagers eventually consented and there has been no record of anyone who was able to avoid relocation.

“The Chinese government says that the relocation of Tibetan villages is voluntary, but official media reports contradict this claim,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “Those reports make clear that when a whole village is targeted for relocation, it is practically impossible for the residents to refuse to move without facing serious repercussions.”

[…] Government officials also ask poorer families to move away from areas that are deemed “more suitable for income generation,” according to the report. Researchers found that local officials sometimes lied about the economic benefits of relocation to get the families to move, leaving them financially stranded in their new neighborhoods.

[…] Chinese laws require that families who relocate demolish their former homes to prevent them from returning. Researchers found that local officials in Tibet often enforce the demolition as well. [Source]

State-driven forced displacement has put Tibetan culture under threat. President of the Tibetan government-in-exile Penpa Tsering told France Culture this week, “We need to talk with the Chinese government. We try to find dialogue. But if you see what the government is doing all over China : everything is aimed at eradicating Tibetan culture. It is a true cultural genocide. We are dying a slow death, and so are the Uyghurs.” Covering the Human Rights Watch report for VOA, William Yang showed that Tibetan activists shared Penpa’s fears about the eradication of Tibetan identity:

Some Tibetan activists worry that the mass relocation or displacement of Tibetan communities may eventually “eradicate the Tibetan identity.”

“It takes many years for [a community] to flourish in one land, and you can’t easily build that in a place where you are not willing to go,” Tenzin Choekyi, a senior researcher at Tibet Watch, told VOA by phone.

In her view, the implementation of the relocation policies hasn’t taken the Tibetan community’s opinions and thoughts into consideration. “The Tibetan identity is in the hands of the Chinese party-state and is being eradicated under different policy directives,” she said. [Source]

This week, Tibetscapes, a research collective at the Indian Institute of Technology–Madras, shared a preview of R. Madhumitha’s recently submitted M.A. thesis that connects the themes of forced displacement, urbanization, Tibean identity. It is titled, “Fiction as a Window to Contemporary Tibet: Understanding the Tibetan Experience of Sedenterisation & Urbanisation”:

Madhumitha’s thesis examines Tibetan responses to Chinese state-making as they emerge through modern Tibetan fiction in English and English translations of Tibetan writing. She argues that 21st-century Tibetan literature has framed an uneasy confrontation with the state’s processes of sedentarization and urbanisation as a central element of the modern Tibetan identity and captures diverse and nuanced lived experiences of Tibetans. [Source]

Last year, CDT produced an interview series about Tibet and spoke with Tenzin Norgay, Lhadon Tethong (part one and part two), Bhuchung Tsering, Dechen Pemba, and Tsering Yangzom Lama. The latest interview in the series was with Lobsang Yangtso, Environmental Researcher at the International Tibet Network, who argued that the Chinese government’s interpretation of environmental protection in fact prioritizes extractive economic policies at the expense of sustainability and participatory governance:

The kind of environmental problems that we see in Tibet, all of them are very urgent. But one thing that I would like to highlight is how the Chinese government interprets environmental protection in the name of clean energy and so-called ecological civilization. They bring policies to Tibet and then remove people from their land in the name of protection: people are relocated, nomads are removed from their land. According to the Chinese government, removing nomads is essential to protect the grassland from degradation, and also to elevate the nomads from poverty. This is a really significant issue because nomads are losing their livelihood. And the nomadic way of life is their identity, their culture. The participation of nomads in the decision making is completely missing in the current policy that we see in Tibet. This has an economic, cultural, and political implication as well. So I feel this is very, very urgent. 

[…] When we talk about environmental policies from the government, the one problem that I see is that, in this whole policy of the Chinese government, economic development is the main emphasis, and in the name of economic development, they try to gain legitimacy from the local people. For them, economic development is more important than environmental protection in Tibet. So many policies like urbanization, especially when we specifically focus on border areas, specifically on the Brahmaputra, that kind of infrastructure development—the roads, the railways, the airports that we see have a lot of impact on water. Slowly, with these infrastructure developments, it will bring more army, more Chinese, and then slowly they will do mining, and then tunnel-building. Everything is all about gaining and extracting the resources from Tibet and then neglecting the respect for the whole nature and ecosystem. For us, we believe in nature reserves and we believe the rivers are sacred, but these concepts have not been really included in the policymaking. Right now, we are under the colonial occupation of China. And yes, the whole global world is facing climate change, but Chinese political control and colonialism has further degraded the whole Tibet environment. [Source]

Updated on May 23, 2024 to correct the location of the government displacements reported by Tibet Watch in mid-April.

This historic decision taken by the African Union recognises, at the highest level of decision making, the vital importance of donkeys across Africa. The African Heads of State agreed the landmark moratorium on Sunday 18th February during the 37th African Union Summit in Ethiopia. The milestone agreement will not only help protect the continent’s 33 million donkeys from being stolen, trafficked and slaughtered, it will also safeguard tens of thousands of communities across Africa that rely on donkeys for their wellbeing and livelihoods. The outcome of the AU Summit follows publication of new figures from The Donkey Sanctuary which show that globally, at least 5.9 million donkeys are slaughtered for their skins every year to meet demand for the traditional Chinese remedy ejiao. As demand for ejiao escalates, donkeys in Africa face a very real existential threat. [Source]

Part of China’s increased demand for ejiao stems from efforts to market the traditional medical ingredient to more people and use it in more products. While Chinese demand accounts for the slaughter of over five million donkeys annually, only two million are supplied from China, with the rest imported from abroad. At The New York Times, Elian Peltier, Keith Bradsher, and Siyi Zhao described China’s role in the donkey trade and its negative impact on diplomatic relations:

China is the main trading partner for many African countries. But in recent years its companies have been increasingly criticized for depleting the continent’s natural resources, from minerals to fish and now donkey skins, a censure once largely aimed at Western countries. “This trade is undermining the mutual development talks between China and African countries,” said Lauren Johnston, an expert on China-Africa relations and an associate professor at the University of Sydney. Some Chinese companies or local intermediaries buy and slaughter donkeys legally, but government officials have also dismantled clandestine slaughterhouses. […] Beijing has been unusually quiet about the African Union’s ban on donkey hide exports, even though it has criticized other measures to stop the flow of goods into China, including restrictions recently imposed by the West on the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. [Source]

Donkeys in rural Africa not only help alleviate poverty but also play a central role in the empowerment of women and girls, by freeing them to attend school rather than remain at home to support domestic labor needs. Lauren Johnston, an academic at the Universities of Adelaide and Sydney, has closely tracked these issues. In her recent paper “China, Africa, and the Market for Donkeys: Sample of Ejiao’s Bitter Aftertaste in Africa,” Johnston traces the rise of ejiao into a mega-industry and the resulting socioeconomic complexity of the China-Africa donkey trade. In a report published last year, titled “China, Africa and the Market for Donkeys: Keeping the Cart Behind the Donkey,” Johnston also highlighted the consequences of the donkey trade for China’s own rural, poor, or sick citizens:

The modern donkey trade shifts the distribution of welfare gains and losses not only in Africa but also in China. Elderly farmers in harsh Chinese environmental conditions have experienced a similar loss of access to donkeys. In 2017 USA Today interviewed Chinese farmer Ma Yufa, who grows vegetables on steep mountain terraces, a terrain unsuited to tractors. Farming much the way his ancestors did, Ma noted that when he was young his family relied heavily on their donkey. His own donkey, however, died in 2014, and he was unable to replace her: ‘There aren’t any donkeys left. We have killed them all.’   Beyond agricultural communities, even Chinese consumers are feeling the adverse effects of China’s ejiao boom. As ejiao prices rise, fewer patients can afford the genuine product for its blood cleaning and other properties. Instead they are ‘fobbed off with wellness candies that have no medical efficacy’. Ejiao may be one of the three great treasures of TCM, alongside deer horn and ginseng, but when it becomes a symbol of ostentatious consumption it cannot always benefit those most in need, even in China itself. [Source]

In an op-ed for the South China Morning Post, Peter J. Li argued that the donkey trade harms China’s reputation in Africa and that Beijing can help crack down on the inflated Chinese demand:

It is in China’s national interest to join the African Union in stopping donkey skin imports. The cruelty of the trade is such that no “panda diplomacy” can mend the damage it has caused to China’s reputation. It does not project the “lovable” image that the Chinese leadership would like to cultivate. The donkey skin trade could overshadow or diminish the significance of China’s debt relief efforts in favour of some African countries, instead creating or reinforcing the image of Chinese businesses which, while capitalising on their country’s massive business presence on the continent, cannot care less about the livelihoods of the poor in their efforts to grab African resources to create demand for high-end products. Ejiao, like other “cure-all” remedies made from wild animal parts or bodily fluid, is a supply-driven product. Produced to meet “demand” that never existed in China on today’s scale, ejiao is a textbook example of how demand can be artificially inflated by the business interests concerned. [Source]

Despite reasons to pursue a more responsible level of ejiao consumption, there are signs that Chinese companies and consumers are instead seeking other sources of supply to meet their enormous demand. The Chinese state-media-affiliated outlet Yicai reported that one of China’s major ejiao-selling TCM companies, Dong-E-E-Jiao, said it will not be affected by the AU’s ban, adding that Pakistan’s Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces have built donkey farms that specialize in breeding donkeys for anticipated export to China. However, as Cobus van Staden stated in a column for the China-Global South Project, the AU ban demonstrates a notable and inspiring example of African agency in the face of Chinese demand for valuable resources, which could be replicated elsewhere in the Global South:

[T]he ejiao industry depends on an inherently finite resource. It’s sucking up donkeys at a rate that’s impossible to replace and taking entire rural economies with it. The African Union’s ban is a massive step towards arresting that slide. It is also a remarkable gesture of African agency against the short-termist logic of “if anyone anywhere wants to buy anything in Africa, the continent had better step up immediately” – a logic that is currently leading to huge exports of unrefined critical mineral ore, with minimal profit to Africa. It remains to be seen how member states will react to the AU’s ruling – the ban will be an interesting test cast of the traditionally weak body’s power of implementation. But the thought leadership role of the ban is already having effect. Brazil – after Africa the second-largest source of donkey skins to China – is reportedly preparing a similar ban. [Source]

Leading China’s delegation was Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of ecology and environment. He was flanked by his minister Huang Runqiu, special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua (due to retire in late December), U.N. undersecretary for general economic and social affairs and incoming special climate envoy Liu Zhenmin, and executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang. China had the third-largest registered delegation, behind Brazil and host nation U.A.E. Among China’s party delegates, only 32 percent were estimated to be women, behind the overall COP28 average of 38 percent (47 percent of the U.S. delegation were women). 

Carbon Brief provided a round-up of Chinese activity at the summit, including its various side events at China’s country pavilion and its sub-summit on methane and non-CO2 greenhouse gasses, which signaled growing U.S.-China climate cooperation. On a more critical note, China did not pledge to the loss and damage fund for vulnerable countries hit hardest by the effects of climate change, and Chinese media coverage of the fund was muted. 

China also refused to commit to a pledge to triple renewable power capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, despite co-releasing the “Sunnylands statement” with the U.S. in November that called on both countries to pursue the first goal. Li Shuo, incoming China Climate Hub Director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, provided several reasons to explain why China ultimately did not sign up for this pledge:

First, Beijing is generally reluctant to sign side declarations and initiatives at the COP. This reluctance is based on China’s skepticism of the accountability of these side deals (most of them carry ambitious aspirations but fall short in implementation), and the view that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the party-driven multilateral decision-making process, should remain the central platform for decision making. Some of the side declarations at previous COPs also cut across the jurisdiction of multiple Chinese ministries, resulting in cumbersome approval processes not compatible with the high pace at the COP.

Second and ironically, China may face challenges in meeting the targets outlined in the Pledge because of its incumbent leading position. While analysts are highly confident in China’s ability to triple renewable energy capacity, there are two caveats to consider. If renewable energy is limited to only wind and solar, China will see rapid growth. However, the potential for further hydro and geothermal power growth, traditionally the largest low-carbon power capacity, is very limited. Base year, which is unspecified in the Pledge, is also important. China could triple its wind and solar capacity by 2030 based on 2022 data. However, if the base year is set for 2023, it is unlikely to happen. This is because of the astronomical renewable energy growth this year. [Source]

Lin Zi at China Dialogue noted that achieving higher energy efficiency would be a struggle for China: 

China Dialogue asked experts why China, despite being a world leader in renewables, has not signed. The general picture they gave is that the tripling is achievable, but the doubling is a sticking point. Energy efficiency is the size of an economy divided by its energy use. Although China has been making strides in cutting the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP, reducing this “energy intensity” a further 4% every year to 2030 would be extremely challenging. This is because China’s economy is still at a stage where it relies on energy-intense sectors such as heavy industry.

[…] One possible reason that China and India, biggest and fourth-biggest renewables generators respectively, did not sign the pledge is the bundling of the headline target of tripling renewables with doubling energy efficiency. Experts said the countries were keen not to over pledge and under deliver, aware that whatever targets they commit to, even if not binding on individual countries to achieve, may invite international pressure. [Source]

Another reason for China’s refusal to commit to the pledge may have been the pledge’s strong anti-coal language. Despite Xi Jinping’s promise to not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, China has been unable to shake its addiction to coal at home. Rachel Cheung at The Wire China described how China’s coal calculations are holding back the structural decline of its carbon emissions:

While China may have installed huge amounts of clean energy projects, the electricity they produce doesn’t always get transmitted to the country’s homes and workplaces, thanks to legacy issues with its grid and power markets. Unless Beijing can enact much needed reforms to the plumbing of its electricity system, highly polluting coal — the traditional bedrock of the country’s power generation — will retain an outsized role.

[…China] has made huge strides in scaling up its energy infrastructure, with plans ongoing to invest over 6 trillion yuan ($896 billion) between 2021 to 2025 to overhaul its state grid. But the reforms needed to integrate low-carbon energy into the system are far less advanced. [Source]

The lack of transparency does not help China in reducing its carbon emissions, either. Leading up to the summit, Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy released a report on the climate disclosure regime in China, which is the key to creating systems for channeling capital towards companies invested in a low-carbon future. The report found that “disclosures by large, emissions-intensive Chinese firms tend to lag behind those of their international sector peers.” The report goes on to explain that these gaps are in part due to “the distinctive role of the party-state—a powerful owner-regulator-financier [that…] can directly express its disclosure expectations via regulation, making voluntary disclosures less meaningful.”

China’s positioning at COP28 demonstrated its attempts to court different countries from around the world, particularly in the Global South, and provide some cover for big oil and gas producers. This week, Faris Al-Sulayman and Jon B. Alterman published a brief for the Center for Strategic and International Studies analyzing how China has established itself as an essential partner in Gulf states’ energy transitions, facilitated by the region’s state-capitalist landscape:

The energy relationship between China and the Gulf states has evolved slowly from a relationship characterized by transactional trade to one that now includes large-scale reciprocal FDI in both conventional fossil fuel assets and increasingly in renewable energy assets that are the central pillars of the Gulf states’ energy transitions. A decade and a half of investment cooperation in the oil and gas sector afforded both sides opportunities to develop relationships and trust, which have been carried forward by a different set of state-owned firms into the renewables sector. China’s dominant position in the supply chain of both solar and wind projects has also amplified this trend. Moving beyond this pattern of reciprocal FDI in the energy sector, China and its Gulf partners have begun to develop projects jointly in other developing markets, signaling a further deepening of this economic relationship and growing alignment of economic and foreign policy priorities. [Source]

In the latest installment in our interview series focusing on Tibet, we spoke to Lobsang Yangtso, the Environmental Researcher at the International Tibet Network. She was born in Kham, Tibet, and later moved with her family to India. She received her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, where she wrote her thesis on “China’s Environmental Security Policies in Tibet: Implications to India, 2001-2013.” She has also worked as a Research Associate at the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy, New Delhi. She regularly attends international environmental conferences and forums as an expert on Tibet’s environment. She recently spoke with CDT about how China’s infrastructure development is destroying Tibet’s environment, the challenges for Tibetans of being heard on the international stage, and how neighboring countries could do more to hold China accountable for the environmental destruction that is impacting the whole region. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

China Digital Times: You were born and spent the early part of your life in Tibet before leaving for India with your family. Could you tell us about the environment where you lived in Tibet, and how those early years might have influenced your current work?

Lobsang Yangtso: I was born in a semi-nomadic family, meaning that when I was in Tibet, my family used to do farming and keep animals as well. And so my village was very rural, where most of the people do farming as their livelihood. So that has really influenced how I see climate change and its impact on farming, and specifically on the farmers. I escaped from Tibet to India in 1991. Then in 2016, after 25 years, I was able to go back home and visit family. During that time, I realized that the farming and livelihoods, and how people depend on farming and animals, has really changed a lot. In front of my house in Tibet, there used to be a small river. And when I was very young, we could just drink straight from that river. Then when I went back home in 2016, that small river was not drinkable at all. I could see lots of waste and garbage on the river. So that has also changed a lot. In my hometown, how people live and how they worship the mountain deities, and believe in the sacred mountain—I still remember that way of life. That has also been their way of protecting the environment. The kind of work that I do right now, I can really see the impact. It’s really important, the impact of climate change on farmers and nomads, and how the local people understand the environment. So these issues are very close to my heart. 

CDT: What do you think is the most urgent environmental issue facing Tibet right now?

LY: The kind of environmental problems that we see in Tibet, all of them are very urgent. But one thing that I would like to highlight is how the Chinese government interprets environmental protection in the name of clean energy and so-called ecological civilization. They bring policies to Tibet and then remove people from their land in the name of protection: people are relocated, nomads are removed from their land. According to the Chinese government, removing nomads is essential to protect the grassland from degradation, and also to elevate the nomads from poverty. This is a really significant issue because nomads are losing their livelihood. And the nomadic way of life is their identity, their culture. The participation of nomads in the decision making is completely missing in the current policy that we see in Tibet. This has an economic, cultural, and political implication as well. So I feel this is very, very urgent. 

The second urgent issue is water security in Asia. Climate change plus the Chinese government’s infrastructure development, and economic development policies like mining, have an impact on the water that flows from Tibet to downstream nations. But unfortunately, downstream nations are not really raising their voices against the Chinese government’s dam construction on the [upper reaches] of the major rivers that flow from Tibet. It’s very worrisome, and it will definitely have an impact not only on Tibetans, but on the downstream nations. If we focus on the Brahmaputra issue, the Chinese are constructing dams on the [upper reaches] of Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River, whereas downstream, India and Bangladesh should really make China accountable. They have a right to know what is happening, but then because of lack of trust and lack of transparency in what is happening inside Tibet, there is no clear picture. So I think water security, the impact of climate change on glacier melt, and then how that impacts the river that flows from Tibet, is also another urgent issue. I feel that there should be unified voices from the downstream nations to pressure the Chinese government to make them accountable–asking them for transparency, information sharing, and allowing independent researchers to go to Tibet, and do both the scientific and social science aspect of the study on the rivers. I think this is also another very urgent issue that we are facing right now.

CDT: When you say that the downstream countries do not raise their voices to China, in terms of the citizens, is that mainly because they just don’t receive the information about what is happening, or do you think there are other reasons? Do you feel like there’s an awareness among the populations in the downstream nations about how this is impacting their lives? 

LY: It’s both, from the citizens’ perspective and also from the government aspect as well. There are environmental groups who work specifically on the Brahmaputra, the Mekong River, and the Indus River. Forget about the governments, the so-called environmental NGOs, when they talk about the Indus River or the Brahmaputra or the Mekong River, they would completely not mention anything about Tibet. That’s what I have witnessed when I go and attend the U.N. water-related conferences or U.N. climate change conferences. They try to avoid and not discuss what is happening upstream. Then secondly, from the government perspective, most of the downstream nations have political relations with China and depend on economic and trade relations with China. So that could maybe be another reason why the downstream nations are not raising their voices or not making China accountable. 

In the downstream nations, there is obviously a lack of information on exactly what is happening in Tibet. There is also a lack of a network among Tibetans and the downstream nations to have direct information sharing, because in the end, even on the international platforms, it’s the Chinese government who represents Tibet. So even at the global climate change discussion, Tibetans are not included. Tibetans inside Tibet are not allowed to come out and speak about what is happening. And then the Tibetans who are in exile, we don’t have official recognition or an official seat at the U.N. So because of the political problems, it’s difficult to find space for us to raise what is happening inside Tibet.

CDT: Just recently, the U.S. State Department announced that as part of the talks between Biden and Xi in San Francisco, the U.S. and China would resume some level of cooperation to address climate change. Is there any room in that bilateral dialogue for Tibetan voices or concerns? 

LY: There definitely won’t be any space. I am sure that the Chinese will not have any Tibet delegation in this whole discussion. It’s also very interesting to see how China is seen, in terms of climate action, or the so-called clean energy green economy, in the whole global climate discussion, and also in the discussion with the U.S. But what is actually happening? The question is, with all these talks, and the promises that China makes at the global level, does it have any impact on Tibet? I feel that it has no impact and no real implementation of these promises inside Tibet, because what we see in Tibet, especially right now: everyone talks about solar energy, right? China is using Tibet as a place where they can build lots of solar energy and solar panels. But there is no discussion or information about how the Chinese government gained such huge areas of land for the government to produce solar energy. Will they really consult the local people? If the Chinese government builds thousands of solar panels on the grassland, what is the impact on the grassland? Today, there is no discussion, but at the international level, we could see the huge solar panels built on the grassland and then try to project how China is investing in green energy or clean energy. So that is one example of how China is using Tibet in the name of clean energy and using Tibetans’ resources and land, and not really understanding or not really consulting the needs of the local people. 

Also the kinds of infrastructure, the mining and the dam constructions on Tibet’s rivers. There are many cases of people forcefully removed from the rivers so that the Chinese government can build dams. There is no room for public consultation; there is no room for environmental impact assessment. Such cases happen in the Chamdo region as well. We can also talk about the spaces for people to raise their voices: they have so many concerns, and the environmental defenders are put in jail. All of these clearly show that what China tries to project at the global level, it doesn’t reflect in Tibet.

CDT: When you and your colleagues, other Tibetan environmental activists, go to international forums to raise these issues, have you ever experienced direct or indirect interference from the Chinese government toward your work?

LY: I think until now we haven’t faced any pressure from the Chinese government, because we attend international events, where there is the international community. The whole world will know if the Chinese government tries to do something or pressure us, so until now, luckily, nothing of that sort has happened to us. When we go to international platforms, there are also restrictions, even at the COP meeting, in the blue-zone areas, you cannot mention or name or shame any country or use any specific country’s national flag. But at the international platforms, our community is very small, and groups who work on environment issues are very, very few. It’s very challenging in terms of finding resources. Since we don’t have official accreditation, we always have to request some third party, a university or individual, to get accreditation for us. These are the kinds of challenges that we face. But fortunately, this year in Sweden, the U.S. State Department hosted a panel on water security in the Himalayan region during World Water Week in Sweden. And so we were provided a platform by the U.S. State Department. I felt like this was one great initiative by the U.S. State Department for the Tibetans. When we go to other conferences, in Glasgow, even the Czech Republic, officials were kind enough to meet us and then take our briefing papers. So there are some ally countries that provide us spaces. But still, I feel that still there is a lack of spaces for us. We need more resources and more avenues so that our resistance can be heard by everyone.

CDT: In most of the interviews that I’ve done so far in this series, we’ve talked a lot about the Chinese government policy of Sinicization, which is having a deep impact on the survival of Tibetan religion, language and culture. But it obviously has an environmental impact also, especially, as you mentioned, with the forced resettlement of nomads. Can you explain a little bit more about those impacts and how the current Chinese government policy of Sinicization is affecting Tibet’s environment?

LY: When we talk about Chinese government policies, this year, the Chinese government has introduced one policy which is called the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Ecological Conservation Law. In that policy, they talked about the protection of the Tibet environment and also water resources. In that public policy, the Chinese government says that it is the local government who has the authority to implement these policies and protections. These policies also in a way provided some kind of rights for the local government to carry out mining activities, which has a lot of impact on what we see in Tibet right now. But these policies are not translated into Tibetan language, but are framed or formulated for the Tibetan areas, which is how they try to Sinicize Tibet in terms of language. So, it also has an impact on Tibet’s environment. 

When we talk about environmental policies from the government, the one problem that I see is that, in this whole policy of the Chinese government, economic development is the main emphasis, and in the name of economic development, they try to gain legitimacy from the local people. For them, economic development is more important than environmental protection in Tibet. So many policies like urbanization, especially when we specifically focus on border areas, specifically on the Brahmaputra, that kind of infrastructure development—the roads, the railways, the airports that we see have a lot of impact on water. Slowly, with these infrastructure developments, it will bring more army, more Chinese, and then slowly they will do mining, and then tunnel-building. Everything is all about gaining and extracting the resources from Tibet and then neglecting the respect for the whole nature and ecosystem. For us, we believe in nature reserves and we believe the rivers are sacred, but these concepts have not been really included in the policymaking. Right now, we are under the colonial occupation of China. And yes, the whole global world is facing climate change, but Chinese political control and colonialism has further degraded the whole Tibet environment. 

Right now the problem is that there is also a danger that when you try some environmental protection activity in Tibet, they might politicize it or, if they realize that you are challenging the Chinese government, then you are put in jail. There are many cases of Tibetans put in jail because of their environmental protection work, which creates a fear among other Tibetans. So I feel that it’s very important for the international community to realize what is actually happening, because sometimes the international community, especially the environmental NGOs, don’t really focus much on Tibet, because they say that there is a lack of information. But lack of information also clarifies that it is under a total, complete authoritarian regime. And so, in that space, we should also find a way and find a solution from that. Since there is a lack of information, they feel that there is no scope in working on this specific area. Some environmental NGOs want to have good relations with the government, and they want to have their headquarters in Beijing or Shanghai, and so then they sacrifice Tibet’s environment issue. For them, it’s about finding a scope and finding more resources and more open space with Beijing. That’s what I realized when I tried to interact with other people and tried to learn knowledge. Earlier, the Chinese government would allow Western scholars to go to Tibet. Now, they have stopped that. Now, for many Western scholars, the environment focus has shifted to the [non-Tibetan] Himalayan region. In the long term, there will be a huge gap on the environment issues in Tibet, which will further make it difficult to bring some changes, or actually try to know what is actually really happening in Tibet. 

CDT:  Within Tibet, you’ve mentioned that people who speak up about these issues can be imprisoned. Is there any space at all inside Tibet for environmental advocacy, or for environmental advocates to influence the government at all? 

LY: I believe that Tibetans inside Tibet have been very smart. They are smart enough to find a way. One space that I see right now in Tibet is in terms of waste management or the collecting of garbage. In that case, it seems that there is some space when local people are mobilizing among themselves, especially the traditional leaders like monasteries, and high lamas, and lay persons. They have taken the initiative on waste management. Tree plantation is another [area where] local people have taken the initiative in terms of environmentalism in Tibet, which is great, and I really hope that the Chinese government will not stop that. I think this is another major problem, because in Tibet, most of the grasslands are turning into desert. So, the local people are raising concerns and they take their own initiative. 

Another problem is that in Tibet, there is no space for international agencies to come and work. The resources are limited over there. In terms of waste management, people do collect the garbage, but then what happens after collecting that garbage because there is no recycling system, there is no recycling facility provided by the government, or there are no private companies who can recycle. These initiatives are primarily taken by the local people, but they have to have a lot of resources and support from companies or the environmental NGOs. So that kind of initiative or that kind of space is not seen in Tibet right now. Tibetans are also finding ways in terms of environmental protection through art and music; there are some people finding avenues on that, and they have been smart enough to find spaces. But these kinds of spaces take a really, really long time, and there is no collective or coordinated environmental campaign inside Tibet. It’s really difficult for them to coordinate with the other areas. That is another problem that we see. Environmental issues like waste management, or tree plantations, are not considered very sensitive. But if someone raises their voice against mining or against the damming, they are silenced immediately and the government uses force, because that really challenges the government policies. Similarly, it’s very difficult to find scholars doing research on mining or doing research on damming issues in Tibet because they don’t provide any access, even for the local community. Forget about outside researchers coming into Tibet.

CDT: Has there been any opportunity for you or your colleagues to work together with Chinese environmental activists? Are you aware of any Chinese environmental groups that are focused on issues within Tibet?

LY: International environment-related events are one space where I can make contact with Chinese environmentalists. When I was in Glasgow for COP26, I was trying to interact with one really famous environmentalist, but that person has very limited information on what is happening in Tibet. I requested that person to visit Tibet and to interact with the local people, use your own resources and understand. So I hope that person has taken the initiative. For the environmental groups who are based in Beijing, their access to Tibet is also shrinking. That is another challenge. Earlier we had scholars, not specifically activists but academicians who would come to India to do research. But now it’s been four or five years. During COVID and after COVID, the [Chinese] government doesn’t allow people to come out, even Chinese scholars, to India. They are controlling not only the Tibetans, but the Chinese to come and interact with other people, specifically the Tibetans. But I really personally hope that when we compare the Tibetans and the Chinese, the Chinese environmentalists and activists might have a little bit more freedom. If they could find a space or go and do some work, that would be a great help, not only for the Tibetans, but also for the Chinese as well.

CDT: What are some recent successes in the environmental movement that give you hope?

LY: For me, the hope is that, as I said earlier, in exile we have lots of Tibetan academicians and researchers who do lots of work. But that is purely academic; they use purely the academic platform to highlight the issues in Tibet. Then we have Tibetans, and Tibet groups or Tibet support groups, NGOs, or activists who talk about Tibet’s environment at the global platforms. One success story, or the hope that I see, is that nowadays especially young Tibetan [women] are coming up and doing lots of work. So that is really encouraging to see. Then we have Tibetans inside of Tibet that have been the hope for me–finding a way and then doing environmentalism, in terms of protecting wildlife. Even small environmental work, such as cleaning the garbage, or protecting the ecosystem, these are also another hope that we see. 

But the challenges are much, much bigger. I really hope that in the future, our activism and work will gain more support, and more allies, so that we can work with environmental NGOs, and also highlight the issues at the Geneva U.N. summits. If this could happen, that could be another way of pressuring China, but the Chinese government doesn’t really change its policy. It’s very difficult for us. But in the end, China is also very cautious of their international image. They are also accountable with international media, they are part of COP meetings, and they are a member of the U.N. Security Council, so they should also follow international norms and international law. So I really hope that we bring some positive changes. But then I feel that a political solution is the only solution where we can protect the Tibet environment.

CDT: What can individual members of the international community, including our readers, do to help support environmental protection in Tibet?

LY: As you are aware, finding a platform and space is another big challenge in terms of environmental activism. The international community, or your readers, if you can collaborate with Tibetans and provide a platform for the Tibetans, that would be really important. Second is that in many of the discussions, the whole Tibet environment issue specifically has been ignored, or not gained much attention. For the readers, to try to understand, and give more attention to Tibet’s environment, could be another solution. Readers could also support Tibet NGOs and activist groups. We have organizations like International Tibet Network, Tibet Watch, Free Tibet, International Campaign for Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet. There are many other groups. The Tibetan government-in-exile has a special desk on the environment. So if you could also support these organizations, that also really benefits our work on the environment. 

I also think, how can we bring positive changes inside Tibet? There are many Western tourists or travelers who might get a chance to go to Tibet, even though you travel with a tour guide. If you get a chance, and if you want to travel to Tibet, you could also try to observe and try to understand, and try to find as much information as possible. That could be another way of bringing attention to Tibet.

CDT: Besides those organizations that you just mentioned, what are some places where our readers can get more information about environmental issues facing Tibet?

LY: Our office has a special website called Tibet Climate Crisis. We have social media, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Gabriel Lafitte from Australia has a website called Rukor.org which has a lot of information on the latest environmental issues on Tibet, specifically on Chinese government policy. He has recently released a report on lithium mining in Tibet. The Tibetan government-in-exile’s Tibet Policy Institute also has an environment desk, where you can find a lot of information. International Campaign for Tibet has a list of environment defenders and the Australia Tibet Council also has released a report on the environment in Tibet as well. So there are ample websites and resources that people can find. It would be really helpful to us to support our work, and then amplify and then spread and share our information as much as possible. 

CDT: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about environmental issues in Tibet or about your work that I haven’t asked?

LY: I would also like to highlight how because of the political relations between India and China, both countries are right now in fast competition to build lots of infrastructure development in the border areas, and that has a big impact on the environment as well. The whole Himalaya belt, the Tibetan Plateau, is a very sensitive, very fragile ecosystem. The Chinese government is building infrastructure–the roads, the railway, the border infrastructure, and now they’re also creating the border villages, where they are allowing people to be stationed at the border, so that they can protect the border, but also creating lots of stress on the whole ecosystem. [This] will have a lot of impact on the whole Himalaya belt, which right now is another major emerging issue that I observe and I try to study. I try to travel to Nepal and also Arunachal in India. It’s very concerning and local people are raising concerns, but their voices are not reaching higher decision-making offices. This will have a huge negative impact on the whole Himalaya belt. 

But I would like to emphasize more that it’s really, really important that downstream nations should really include the voices of Tibetans in their policymaking or in their collaborative work. If you ignore the whole Tibetan Plateau, because you want to keep good relations with China and the Chinese economy, it will have an impact on your local people and your environment. Right now is the time to understand these consequences before it is too late.

Resources on Tibet’s environment:

• Tibet Climate Crisis (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X)
• Rukor.org
• Rukor report on lithium mining in Tibet
• International Campaign for Tibet’s Environment page
• Students for a Free Tibet’s Climate Crisis page
• Free Tibet’s Land and Environment page
• Australia Tibet Council report on Tibet’s environment
• The Third Pole

In such a repressive environment, how do Tibetans in Tibet hold onto their cultural identity? How does the world find out what is happening there? How do exiles stay connected with their families and homeland? Where can we find hope for the future of Tibet and Tibetans? CDT has launched this interview series as a way to explore these questions and to learn more about current conditions in Tibet, efforts to preserve Tibet’s religious and cultural heritage, and the important work being done every day by activists, writers, researchers, and others to help and support Tibetans inside and outside the region. Read previous interviews in the series.

At Sixth Tone, Ding Rui summarized the record-breaking heat wave engulfing China this week:

From a remote village in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region rewriting China’s weather records to multiple cities issuing heat alerts in the past 10 days alone, a widespread and deadly heat wave across China has had devastating consequences, including the loss of at least four lives. 

According to China News Service, Sanbao Village in Xinjiang reached a scorching 52.2 degrees Celsius on Sunday, with authorities predicting temperatures will stay above 35 degrees Celsius until Friday. 

The heat wave has particularly affected northwestern and southeastern parts of the country, with multiple cities grappling with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius over the past 10 days. As a result, over 200 heat alerts were issued by weather stations across different cities on Tuesday alone. Shattering more records, this season has also witnessed the highest number of days with temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius since records began in 1961, as reported by China Daily. [Source]

“You and I know things are changing,” Kerry told Premier Li Qiang, referencing reports of extreme temperatures in Xinjiang. Kerry, who also met with top foreign policy official Wang Yi and climate counterpart Xie Zhenhua, is the third senior U.S. official to visit Beijing in five weeks, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Climate negotiations between the U.S. and China were suspended in August of last year as part of the Chinese government’s reaction to former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. This meeting in Beijing is the first substantive summit between the U.S. and China on the climate crisis since then.

The main topics of discussion during Kerry’s visit include climate funding for poorer nations, methane and coal reduction, solar tariffs and batteries, and attempts to limit global temperature increases to a range of 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius. Jennifer A Dlouhy from Bloomberg outlined the agenda for the climate talks this week:

Negotiations this week are aimed at making headway on a series of issues — including global climate targets, methane abatement and the use of coal-fired power. They’re also expected to lay the groundwork for potential pronouncements at the U.N. General Assembly in September, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in California in November and the U.N. climate summit in Dubai at the end of the year.

[…] Talks are set to proceed on multiple tracks, covering ambitions in addressing climate change, a new loss and damage fund for compensating climate victims and areas for possible bilateral collaboration. Those could include deploying more wind and solar power and handling the intermittent nature of those electricity sources, according to senior U.S. State Department officials, who requested anonymity to discuss private details.

[…E]xperts in climate diplomacy and U.S.-China relations stress that even a formal joint statement from Xie and Kerry’s discussions that commits to keep talking — and to revive a joint working group they agreed to form in November 2021 — would be progress. [Source]

“Our hope is that this can be the beginning of a new definition of cooperation and capacity to resolve differences between us,” Kerry told Wang Yi, adding that President Biden “values his relationship” with Xi Jinping and “looks forward to being able to move forward, change the dynamics.” Wang referred to Kerry as “my old friend.” However, as Al Jazeera described, the Chinese government has refused to separate cooperation on climate change issues from the broader bilateral relationship:

In a commentary published on Sunday, the Xinhua state news agency said recent US-China official interactions are a “good sign for preventing further miscalculations, and steering bilateral relations back on track”. But it added that Beijing was seeking more concessions on the political side – something the US has said it will not provide.

“It is especially true for the White House to bear in mind that seeking to compartmentalize cooperation with – or competition and suppression against – China in bilateral ties is simply unrealistic in practice and unacceptable for Beijing,” Xinhua said.

“For China-US cooperation to be healthy and sustainable, bilateral ties must be treated as a whole,” it said. [Source]

Meanwhile, China continues to suffer from rising temperatures and the resulting environmental consequences. New research has revealed that extreme weather events are causing significant deterioration of cultural relics at UNESCO World Heritage sites in Gansu. Other recent research has shown that climate change on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is bringing heat waves and drought, melting glaciers faster, expanding lakes, and worsening desertification. In Sichuan and Yunnan, droughts are causing a severe decline in hydropower generation that in turn has led to increased electricity prices, rationed electricity supplies, and increased coal-plant operations. An announcement that residents in Sichuan—a province that has traditionally enjoyed a surplus of hydropower—will no longer benefit from a preferential refund policy for electricity consumption was met with outrage online. CDT Chinese editors collected some of the reactions on Weibo and Twitter, including criticisms of Sichuan’s sales of electricity to other provinces, and fears of a repeat of last year’s power outages, high energy prices, and heat-stroke deaths:

苒清_：Are you PUA’ing [manipulating] us in advance, so you can act like dicks and cut off the power just like you did last year? With region-wide power outages and tiered pricing schemes?

圈总嘞拖板孩：Is this some sort of inoculation, meant to prepare us for the worst? Is this how you plan to deal with the problem of an aging population?

不理不理右门卫：First shut off the air conditioning in government office buildings.

黑色幽灵凡：I’m begging you, do your jobs right and ensure the supply of residential electricity in Sichuan. So many people died of heat stroke last year!

Whyatsh：Do these “domestic forces” selling electricity even speak Sichuan dialect?

Chunlin04596859：If things go on like this, sooner or later “local forces” will rise up. [Chinese]

China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said he met with his U.S. counterpart John Kerry for unofficial consultations, emphasizing that the door is always open on the Chinese side for a joint effort to promote a climate agenda at the annual global climate meeting held in the Egyptian coastal city Sharm el-Sheikh.

Xie disclosed that he and Kerry communicated in eight e-mails during the suspension of talks between the two countries as they ha[d] kept in contact privately following a friendship of 25 years. Xie also called on the U.S. side to remove obstacles to resuming formal dialogue.

The special representative said China would be willing to contribute to a mechanism for compensating poorer countries for losses and damage caused by climate change. Meanwhile, he urged for more action from developed countries, including fulfilling a $100 billion climate finance pledge and creating a roadmap for doubling adaptation funding. [Source]

Following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, the Chinese government cut off high-level climate talks with the U.S., in an example of Xi Jinping’s resistance to decoupling climate cooperation from geopolitical disputes. The meetings between Kerry and Xie, while not yet a formal discussion, mark an important thaw in the U.S.-China relationship. The two men “came out of retirement to take on their countries’ top climate positions, and have worked together on some of the defining international policy breakthroughs of the last decade,” wrote Max Bearak and Lisa Friedman for The New York Times. Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network, stated, “The U.S. being the biggest historical emitter and China being the biggest emitter now, if they come together and say that we are going to be working in harmony, it is going to send a very positive signal. And we need such a signal because we are in a very bleak scenario.”

▶️INTERVIEW:Beijing suspended ongoing climate talks in response to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. @NCUSCR #PIPfellows @east_winds (@GPS_UCSD) and @JoannaILewis (@STIAGeorgetown) join moderator @greenlawchina (@UCLA_Law) to discuss the environmental implications.https://t.co/5BQWZWK87X

— National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (@NCUSCR) November 10, 2022

Their envoys are one measure of the U.S. and China’s commitment to tackling climate change. China has sent a delegation of more than 50 people, led by Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of Ecology and Environment. The 16-member American delegation is led by John Kerry, and includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken and USAID chief Samantha Power. Notably, President Joe Biden attended the summit, while Xi Jinping did not. However, the two leaders are scheduled to meet face-to-face next Monday during the G20 summit in Indonesia, where they plan to discuss a range of issues, including climate change.

A major item on the COP27 agenda is the creation of a “loss and damage” (L&D) fund to compensate developing countries for the irreversible losses from climate change that disproportionately affect them. While developed countries are the biggest greenhouse-gas emitters, their pledges to this fund have so far been either nonexistent or comprise only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions required. Kerry agreed to discuss the idea of such a fund, but Biden did not make any commitments to it in his speech on Friday. Indigenous protesters also interrupted Biden’s speech to critique his insufficient action and “false solutions to the climate crisis.” The Chinese delegation expressed support for the creation of an L&D fund, but later said China would not contribute to it. Valerie Volcovici and Aidan Lewis from Reuters reported that Pacific Islanders think China should pay its fair share:

Prime Minister [of Antigua and Barbuda] Gaston Browne, speaking on behalf of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) negotiating bloc, told reporters the world’s first- and third-biggest greenhouse gas emitters – though still emerging economies – have a responsibility to pay into a fund.

“We all know that the People’s Republic of China, India – they’re major polluters, and the polluter must pay,” Browne said. “I don’t think that there’s any free pass for any country and I don’t say this with any acrimony.” [Source]

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to today's discussion live from #COP27, especially our speakers @tombaxter17, @joydeepgupta, @LiShuo_GP & @rishirbhandary! 👏

Missed the event? Listen to the recording here 👇https://t.co/ASgM3KmHE7

— Dialogue Earth (@DialogueEarth_) November 11, 2022

The pressure to take responsibility has also led to a competition to demonstrate which country is doing more to address climate change. In his speech, Biden took a jab at China’s continued financing of overseas coal plants, while promoting U.S. initiatives: “If countries can finance coal in developing countries, there’s no reason why we can’t finance clean energy in developing countries.” Belinda Schäpe, a climate diplomacy researcher on EU–China relations at think tank E3G, wrote optimistically: “[T]he attempt to outcompete each other in their domestic energy transitions, green tech development and financial assistance to the global south could be of significant global benefit.” Phelim Kine from Politico collected a range of opinions on how Sino-U.S. competition may help or hinder climate solutions: 

“The geopolitical competition can actually be helpful…the U.S. doing more [on climate] can lead China to do more,” argued Alexandra Hackbarth, a China expert at the D.C.-based climate change think tank E3G.

[…] We have “urged [the U.S. and China] to demonstrate what we are used to of leadership from both of them,” Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative to the COP27 presidency, told reporters on Friday.

[…] “If each country is just doing their own thing [on climate]…we are basically in a car crash situation,” said [Li Shuo, a Beijing-based policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia]. [Source]

In an interview with Panda Paw Dragon Claw’s TJMa, Maureen Penjueli, a Fiji-based coordinator for the Pacific Network on Globalization, described how Sino-U.S. competition for influence in the region overshadows the fact that Pacific Islanders’ conception of security is closely linked to climate change, and how Sino-U.S. collaboration is crucial: 

PPDC (Panda Paw Dragon Claw): [H]ow is “security” understood on the ground?

MP (Maureen Penjueli): Since a couple of years ago, the Pacific has been really expanding the definition of security beyond traditional or conventional security: military, policing, and borders… to include “human security”. So the region has been one of the very first to make the climate crisis the most important security issue. The inclusion of environmental concerns in the concept of security is quite unique particularly in this part of the world where climate change is acutely felt. 

There is this ongoing tension of trying to educate people outside the region about what Pacific security is in this expanded framework of definition. A lot of the external partners have to juggle conventional security interests (border control, transnational crime…) with what the Pacific is really confronting, such as the climate emergency. These two narratives are almost competing with each other. When you look at the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, it’s all about conventional security interests.

[…] PPDC: [A]re there opportunities for the US, China, Australia and others to collaborate and jointly deliver development assistance to the region?

MP: […] We’ve been saying for a while that China is an important partner. It is part of the non-alignment movement; we have a long history with China. It’s not in any one’s interest to force an “us or them” scenario because no one wins in that case. So I think the need to create political dialogue spaces is quite important. But when you see how the bilateral cooperations work (China-Pacific, US-Pacific, Australia-Pacific), you can see it’s still hard to try to facilitate dialogue among the development partners in the region. I’m not sure what it will take to have all the development partners at the same table rather than the current model of “divide and rule”, or total capture by one or another. [Source]

While Chinese officials at COP27 say they remain “deeply committed” to their net-zero targets, China has struggled to cap emissions amid heightened concerns over domestic energy security. In order to ensure electricity supply over the past two years, the central government has increased daily output, production capacity, and new approvals of coal plants. The competing priorities of climate and coal risk setting back progress and international collaboration. However, there are signs of hope from below: as Yuan Ye reported for Sixth Tone, a new generation of Chinese climate activists, often veterans of  labor-rights and feminist movements, are pushing the country towards a more inclusive, climate-conscious future: 

China’s climate movement has also benefited from the country’s shifting political environment. Beijing has become more vocal about climate issues, making high-profile pledges to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060. That has prompted more Chinese nonprofits and activists to pivot toward this area, as environmental protection and climate change are now considered “safer” issues to be involved with.

[…] Luo [Ruixue], the plastics waste campaigner [at Guangzhou-based group Plastic Free China], moved into environmental advocacy after the feminist media platform she was working for ceased operations in 2020. After years of struggling to keep the group alive while living on a salary that at times dropped to just 2,000 yuan ($275) per month, the strain on her mental health became too much, she says.

“There was a lot of financial pressure, and we also had to think about our future development,” says Luo.

Another Guangzhou-based feminist tells Sixth Tone that she is trying to break into climate advocacy due to its good career prospects and “intersectionality.” 

“I think climate change is about protecting vulnerable groups,” said the activist, who asked to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns. “I would still love to do gender rights advocacy, but I guess I would have to do it in a more roundabout way.” [Source]

China’s heatwave, stretching past 70 days, is its longest and most widespread on record, with around 30% of the 600 weather stations along the Yangtze recording their highest temperatures ever by last Friday.

[…] China’s National Meteorological Centre downgraded its national heat warning to “orange” on Wednesday after 12 consecutive days of “red alerts”, but temperatures are still expected to exceed 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Chongqing, Sichuan and other parts of the Yangtze basin.

One weather station in Sichuan recorded a temperature of 43.9C [111 Fahrenheit] on Wednesday, the highest ever in the province, official forecasters said on their Weibo channel. [Source]

China is experiencing the worst heatwave ever recorded in global history.

The combined intensity, duration, scale, and impact of this heatwave is unlike anything humans have ever recorded.

Over 260 locations have seen their hottest days ever during this 70+ day heatwave. pic.twitter.com/TCKvR37Em3

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) August 23, 2022

Unimaginable heat in China 🇨🇳

The longevity and intensity of the heatwave is hard to comprehend. Too many heat records to count, both day and night.

Beibei hit 45°C for two consecutive and some places not falling below 34°C at night.

The heat is ongoing… pic.twitter.com/pxWgaMDZQ0

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) August 20, 2022

The heatwave has caused widespread droughts. China’s National Meteorological Center stated that parts of Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Tibet have all experienced moderate to severe droughts. Jiangxi’s Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, was reduced to 25 percent of its usual size. Rainfall in the Yangtze River basin has been about 45 percent lower than normal since July, and water levels dropped so low that previously submerged 600-year-old Buddhist statues were uncovered in the river. 

Shocking image of Chongqing river shared by Dutch CG on LinkedIn this morning.

CQ is massive industrial base, but like neighboring Sichuan province, forced to shut down factories for up to a week to conserve water.

Is 2022 the year climate change becomes tangible in China? pic.twitter.com/q1cjJlEyIp

— Richard Brubaker (@richbrubaker) August 21, 2022

Officials have sprung into action to mitigate the drought’s impact on the country’s autumn harvest, which accounts for 75 percent of China’s total grain supply. China’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs declared an “all-out battle” against drought, and four government departments issued an urgent joint emergency notice urging local authorities to ensure “every unit of water … be used carefully.” The government has begun using cloud seeding, forcing rain by firing chemicals into the sky, and discharged hundreds of cubic meters of water from reservoirs to replenish rivers in agricultural zones. Noel Celis from AFP reported on other government measures to protect the harvest: 

China produces more than 95 percent of the rice, wheat and maize it consumes, but a reduced harvest could mean increased demand for imports in the world’s most populous country — putting further pressure on global supplies already strained by the conflict in Ukraine.

State media reported Wednesday evening that the government had pledged 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) to help ensure good rice harvests this autumn.

A meeting of Beijing’s State Council, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, had agreed the government should “do an even better job in fighting and reducing drought”, broadcaster CCTV said.

Officials also called for “a combination of measures to increase water sources to fight drought, first ensure drinking water for the people, ensure water for agricultural irrigation, and guide farmers to fight drought and protect autumn grain”, it added. [Source]

In provinces such as Chongqing and Sichuan, which are heavily reliant on hydropower, energy resources have been stretched thin. CK Tan from Nikkei Asia reported that due to hot temperatures and low water supplies, local governments have ordered power cuts in order to save electricity: 

Last week, the temperature soared to 45 C in Chongqing city, where some residents scrambled to find cooler refuge in subway stations and supermarkets.

On Monday, the city ordered that opening hours at hundreds of shopping malls be shortened from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. to “ensure the safe and orderly supply of power and guarantee the people’s basic needs,” the local government said.

Sichuan had ordered companies using industrial power to suspend production for six days starting Aug. 15. Local media report that businesses have been told to extend that suspension. The policy applies to 16,000 companies in 19 cities across the province, including a Toyota Motor factory and production facilities for key Apple supplier Foxconn.

Meanwhile, Huzhou City in Zhejiang Province, an industrial hub near Shanghai, advised residents to keep air conditioning at certain levels, while tenants living on the first three floors of high-rise buildings were asked to use stairs instead of elevators. [Source]

Shanghai's major landmarks are set to go dark on Monday and Tuesday to save electricity, as several cities face rising energy demand amid insanely hot temperatures. pic.twitter.com/KkYeKKp27I

— Bibek Bhandari (@bibekbhandari) August 22, 2022

Manya Koetse from What’s On Weibo documented how local residents in Sichuan and Chongqing adapted to the heat wave and energy cuts:

[The power cuts] led to some extraordinary scenes from Sichuan and Chongqing subways, where travelers found themselves traveling in the dark or with only emergency lights on.

[…] Left without airconditioning, some offices also used big blocks of ice to keep employers cool.

[…] Some viral images showed residents sleeping in underground parking lots (#四川达州出现停电居民发声#).

[…] Another viral video from the city of Guang’an showed how a woman used a rope to get her order delivered to the 25th floor of her apartment building, where the elevators stopped working due to the power cuts (#高温停电女子拉绳吊外卖上25楼#). The woman had allegedly ordered in food at 4pm, expecting a power cut at 6pm, but then the elevators stopped running at 5pm already. [Source]

Some netizens found news of the heat wave and power cuts entertaining and mocked those affected by the heat using the viral hashtag #ThePeopleOfChongqingAndSichuanAreAboutToCry#. Censors also took down certain WeChat posts criticizing poor energy planning in Sichuan, and some news outlets sugarcoated the heatwave and toned down its human toll. In response, many netizens criticized the sanitized news coverage and provided first-person accounts of their struggles. Some called out instances of perceived energy waste, such as Shanghai’s decision to put on a light show for pop singer Yan Haoxiang while subway stations in Sichuan had no lights. “The stinking rich are living it up, while people are dying of heatstroke on the street,” one netizen wrote on Weibo. CDT Chinese editors collected other netizen comments containing details of how people were impacted by the heat and criticism of apathy towards their suffering:

会拥有洋娃娃吗_：I’m speechless that anyone would find this amusing. At night, the emergency ward of Chengdu Hospital is packed with old people suffering from heatstroke. The ICU is full. Doctors are seriously telling relatives that their elderly family members could die at any moment. Why does the Internet still find this entertaining? I don’t understand.

重生之我是爆炒淀粉肠：It’s not that we’re not “about to cry,” we’re actually dying.

嘎嘎很尬：This hashtag waters down the suffering. Can’t they see how many people have died from heat exhaustion and heatstroke?

告诉花城我爱他nice：To the person who came up with this sort of hashtag: don’t you have a heart? Why don’t you come and find out what it’s like to spend a whole day in 40-degree heat during a power outage? I wonder how many people who survived the pandemic won’t survive this summer.

梨花：Forest fires are raging in Chongqing, old people aren’t going to survive this hot summer, hospital emergency wards have a constant stream of patients coming in with heatstroke, factories are closed, and businesses have limited their hours. Why would someone use the phrase “about to cry” to sum up these disasters? Is that hashtag even still on the hot search list? [Chinese]

The energy crunch has become a national issue, since numerous neighboring provinces source their electricity from hydropower from Sichuan and Chongqing. As a result of the energy supply bottleneck, governments are turning to coal to meet energy demands. Chen Xuewan, Fan Ruohong, and Denise Jia from Caixin reported on Sichuan’s renewed appetite for coal:

The situation is so dire, some have called for shuttered power plants fueled by coal– which accounted for 56% of total power consumption in 2021 – to be turned back on, while approvals for new plants have surged this year, seemingly flying in the face of the government’s policy to cut coal use as part of its goal to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030.

In fact, provincial governments approved plans to add 8.63 gigawatts of new coal power plants in the first quarter of 2022 alone, already 46.55% the capacity approved throughout 2021, according to a report published by Greenpeace East Asia’s Beijing office last month.

Even during the wet season that sees rains swell the Yangtze River, Sichuan needs to increase output at coal-fired power plants to meet not just its own energy needs, but also out-of-province demand, Sichuan Electric Power Trading Center said in a report early this year. [Source]

However, Zhao Ziwen from the South China Post reported that coal will not be enough to satisfy Sichuan’s energy needs, let alone those of other provinces:

[S]upport for coal-fired power plants alone will be “insufficient” to deal with Sichuan’s problem, because thermal power makes up a small part of its energy mix, said Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy at Xiamen University.

The province relies on hydropower to generate around 80 per cent of its electricity, while thermal power generates less than 20 per cent, data from Sichuan Power Exchange Centre showed.

“Sichuan’s coal power does not account for a high proportion [of total power generation], transporting coal into the Sichuan can only ensure that coal-power equipment does not shut down,” said Yuan Jiahai, a professor at the School of Economics and Management at North China Electric Power University. [Source]

Translation by Cindy Carter.

In Henan’s provincial capital of Zhengzhou, citizens were thwarted in their efforts to commemorate the hundreds of people who died or disappeared last year when flood waters inundated road tunnels and subway stations. Local residents reported that florists had received notices forbidding them from selling flowers to anyone intending to place them near metro stations where people had drowned, and that plainclothes police officers were forcibly removing such displays of bouquets. “Flowers are allowed to bloom, but not to be seen,” wrote one netizen. Other online reflections on the anniversary conveyed fury at official negligence and vowed to never forget the disaster. CDT Chinese recently archived a popular WeChat post about “Raincoat Dad,” who sat for hours outside a metro station waiting in vain for his deceased daughter, with a sign that read: “Niuniu, your dad is still waiting to take you home.”

Flowers are forbidden today in Zhengzhou on one year anniversary of the catastrophic flooding when unknown number of people were drowned in submerged subway trains and cars. https://t.co/Qfh8elpzVb

— 周锋锁 Fengsuo Zhou (@ZhouFengSuo) July 21, 2022

In rural villages west of Zhengzhou, vestiges of the flood remain—waterlines are still visible on walls, and ruined water-logged furniture litters yards. But online, commemorations of the floods were muted or scrubbed. WeChat blocked several accounts that posted articles questioning who was responsible for the floods, and Weibo censored the hashtag “#One Year Anniversary of July 20th Torrential Rains in Zhengzhou, Henan Province# (#河南郑州720特大暴雨一周年#). Reacting to government censorship of flood videos shared online, one netizen wrote: “What can’t be seen online can only be kept in your heart. What sorrow cannot be expressed can only form an undercurrent, roiling beneath the surface.” CDT Chinese collected other netizen reactions to censorship of those attempting to pay tribute to the lives lost during the flood: 

@修勾刷刷碗：The media shouldn’t remain silent, or prohibit people from commemorating the absurd and the grotesque: “Many people feel that repeatedly talking about suffering has no practical function, but I maintain that seeing, listening, speaking, and remembering are inherently meaningful. Society doesn’t suddenly change for the better because of orders from the high and mighty. We ordinary little people have our duty, too. A single spark can start a prairie fire. Rest in peace, and remember.”

@Eddie-crush：This sucks … it’s just rotten to the core. Some people don’t want you to remember, but there are others who will always remember.
@Jonathan翟：The media’s reaction makes me doubt whether there even were torrential rains on July 20, 2021!!! Forgetting is just as terrible as a natural disaster …

@啦啦啦啦我不想佛了：This “stability maintenance” is a low blow. Clearly this would be a good opportunity—through communal tributes, communal mourning, and communal commemoration—to sum up the lessons we have learned and to better plan for the future. A warmer, more sentimental atmosphere would give everyone a sense of unity and hope, and might even teach society important lessons about respect for life and fear of death. But to do this would be tantamount to actually admitting that mistakes were made, so …

@炫_迈_男：The Internet may only have a one-month memory, but the people will never forget! Good and evil will have their comeuppance or reward!

@千秋o_O：There are no media reports, no voices, no memorials, but this day last year remains vivid in my mind. How did we lose our right to mourn it? Is it because it was a man-made disaster? So now we don’t even have the right to commemorate it? What’s the point of deluding yourself and others?

@Rock5891：Heaven sees what humans do. Deleting photos cannot delete the public’s memory. History and suffering should never be forgotten. [Chinese]

The hashtag "One year anniversary of July 20 Zhengzhou super storm" is banned for violating "relevant laws, regulations and policies" by Weibo https://t.co/nMskwp2wfZ

— Han Yang 涵瞰世界 (@polijunkie_aus) July 21, 2022

Meanwhile, new floods and extreme weather continue to wreak havoc in other regions. In late June, floods in Jiangxi and Guangdong damaged the homes of about one million people, as authorities issued the first red alert of the year, indicating the most severe level of weather warning. This week, a tornado killed one person and injured dozens more as it swept through 11 villages in Jiangsu. On Monday, The Guardian reported on deadly flash floods in Sichuan and Gansu:

In the south-western province of Sichuan, at least six people have died and another 12 are missing after torrential rain triggered flash floods, state-owned news outlet CGTN reported on Sunday.

About 1,300 people had been evacuated as of Saturday, the report said.

Meanwhile, in Longnan city in the north-western province of Gansu, another six deaths were reported and 3,000 people had been evacuated, state broadcaster CCTV said. Rainfall over 1½ days was as much as 98.9mm in the worst-affected areas, almost double the July average. [Source]

Accompanying these floods and tornadoes is a widespread, record-breaking heat wave. Liu Zhao, an assistant professor in the department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University, described in Sixth Tone how heat waves in China are becoming hotter, longer, and more frequent:

For more than a month, much of China has been blanketed by extreme heat. From June 16 to July 9, local governments issued 1,372 high-temperature “code reds,” indicating temperatures are expected to rise above 40 degrees Celsius within 24 hours. Nationally, 71 meteorological stations have reported record highs since the start of June, including many in regions not traditionally associated with high heat. In one blistering stretch, surface temperatures measured by a station in the central province of Henan reached 74.1 degrees Celsius.

[…] This year, deaths from hyperthermia have already been reported in Zhejiang, Shaanxi, and Sichuan provinces; many of those who died were workers on construction sites and in factories. One construction worker in the northwestern city of Xi’an reportedly worked nine hours in high temperatures before succumbing. [Source]

Extreme heat has proven similarly deadly. Just this summer, a nurse in Jiangxi fainted while conducting COVID-19 testing in hot weather; a courier in Guangzhou suffered heat stroke and fell into a coma, regaining consciousness over a month later; a sanitation worker in Zigong fainted, suffered a cardiac arrest, and was later diagnosed with heat stroke; and a factory worker in Zhejiang died of organ failure due to heat stroke. Such extreme heat is particularly dangerous for frontline workers, who have been toiling in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius across numerous cities over the past few weeks. In Xi’an, a construction worker died from heat stroke this month, and his family was initially denied financial compensation because the worker had not signed an official contract (a common practice among migrant workers). It was only after a national outcry online that the company agreed to pay for the worker’s funeral.

Beyond the human toll, China’s extreme weather events also exact a financial cost. The South China Morning Post reported that last year floods cost China about $25 billion, the world’s second-highest total after Europe, while only one-tenth of those losses were insured. Nectar Gan from CNN calculated China’s particular vulnerability to these extreme weather events: 

For China, the sheer size of its population and economy means the scale of damage caused by extreme weather events is often massive.

Tropical cyclones, floods and droughts are estimated to cost China about $238 billion annually — the highest in the Asia Pacific region and nearly three times the estimated loss suffered by India or Japan, according to a report released last year by the World Meteorological Organization.

Heat wave-related mortality in China rose by a factor of four from 1990 to 2019, reaching 26,800 deaths in 2019, according to a Lancet study published in 2020. [Source]

In June, the Chinese government released a national climate-change adaptation strategy, acknowledging that climate change and global warming make the country more vulnerable to “sudden and extreme” weather events. While the plan called for modernizing climate-related disaster prevention systems, some scholars worry that governance and coordination issues are more important in preventing disasters than the science of prediction alone. Despite the ongoing and serious threat of climate change, successful government efforts over the past few decades have added to a downward trend of deaths from flooding in China.

However, as government attention to environmental issues has gradually increased, so has government-led censorship of environmental activism. In a recent Bloomberg profile, a Chinese environmental activist who goes by the moniker Nut Brother, or Brother Nut (坚果兄弟), described a narrowing space for protest and an increased level of police harassment. “The changes in the past decade mean we need to have projects that are more creative if we are determined [to] solve the environmental problems,” he said. One of his most recent projects took place in Huludao, Liaoning Province, where toxic fumes from factory pollution have fueled official scrutiny and public anger. This week, China Dialogue reported on Nut Brother’s creative project to raise awareness of the pollution in Huludao:

Over the weekend of 9–10 July, a public phone booth on a busy Beijing street, long underused in the era of smartphones, became a “hotline” for pollution victims in the city of Huludao, Liaoning province, to share their sufferings with total strangers.

It was set up by the artist and activist Nut Brother, well known for his creative tactics in exposing pollution problems. On his Weibo account, Nut Brother recruited members of the public to visit the phone booth, pick up the phone and listen to pollution victims deprived of other channels to air their grievances. Those conversations were recorded as part of a documentary project.

[…] Meanwhile, in Beijing, another “hotline” session at the phone booth ran for about 30 minutes on 16 July before being called off by authorities. [Source]

The Chinese fleet has become a substantial presence in multiple developing countries. Over a third of the authorised CDWF operations in 2019 and 2020 covered 29 specific [exclusive economic zones] in Africa, Asia and South America – the fisheries of many of the regions being characterised by limited [monitoring, control, and surveillance] capacity and coastal regions heavily dependent on fishing for both nutritional and livelihood needs.

The CDWF is frequently associated with illegal fishing. According to the data analysed, fishing without a licence or authorisation is the most common recorded illegal fishing incident, constituting 42% of the total. Using prohibited gear and the capture of prohibited species are the next highest ranking offences, at 11.5% and 10.3% respectively. The size of the fleet, coupled with the high instances of suspected [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] fishing, threatens continued socio-economic stability and inflicts ecological harm globally. 

[…] Whilst data is limited, human rights abuses seem to be common amongst the CDWF, an issue that blights distant-water fishing more generally. Interviews conducted by EJF with 116 Indonesian crewmembers who have worked on vessels belonging to the CDWF indicate that 99% have experienced or witnessed wages being deducted or withheld, 97% have experienced some form of debt bondage/confiscation of guarantee money and documents, 89% have worked excessive overtime, 85% reported abusive working and living conditions, 70% experienced intimidation and threats, and 58% have seen or experienced physical violence. These findings have been echoed in EJF interviews with Ghanaian crew on board CDWF vessels in Ghanaian waters. All 10 crew interviewed had experienced or witnessed physical abuse by Chinese captains, and similarly all 10 reported poor living conditions on the vessels they operated on, including being forced to eat low nutrition food and consume poor quality water – often resulting in sickness and diarrhoea. [Source]

🚨 The world's largest distant water fishing fleet is rife with human rights abuses and illegal fishing.

Testimony from crew on Chinese-owned vessels exposes the fleet’s cruel and destructive practices.

We surveyed crew from 88 vessels. This is what they had to say 🧵 (1/5) pic.twitter.com/Bdh9jPxxMu

— Environmental Justice Foundation (@ejfoundation) April 12, 2022

Insane statistics from @ejfoundation interviews of workers on the world’s biggest fishing fleet:

95% reported illegal fishing.
95% reported shark finning.
58% reported physical violence.
85% reported abusive living conditions.
97% reported debt bondage.https://t.co/RrjTA6Xlar pic.twitter.com/ePn90L1C5Y

— spencer 🦈 (@Unpop_Science) April 5, 2022

The massive size of China’s DWF highlights the importance of examining the environmental and human rights issues that result from its fishing practices. A 2020 report by the Overseas Development Institute found that China’s DWF has 16,966 vessels, significantly larger than previous estimates of approximately 3,000. By contrast, the EU’s DWF fleet was 289 vessels in 2014, and the U.S. had 225 large DWF vessels in 2015—both are orders of magnitude smaller than China’s DWF. Moreover, Chinese vessels account for nearly 40 percent of the top-ten DWF activities in other countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs), which is more than any other country. Among China’s DWF vessels, almost 1,000 are registered to countries other than China and 518 are registered in African nations, allowing these vessels to go unreported in official figures and evade scrutiny for harmful activity. 

According to the EFJ, China’s DWF has grown and operated in an unsustainable manner, imperiling maritime ecosystems and the local communities that depend on them; many such local communities are already in precarious situations. The UN stated in 2018 that 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are “fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted,” primarily due to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Chinese vessels are responsible for over half of all global industrial fishing offenses, and while seventy nations have joined the agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing, China is not one of them. Among those most impacted by China’s IUU fishing are coastal states, particularly in West Africa, whose economies and food security are heavily dependent on fishing. Drawing from the EFJ report, Kate Bartlett from VOA explained how IUU fishing by China’s DWF harms local African communities:

CDWF bottom-trawlers catch an estimated 2.35 million tons of fish a year in West Africa, accounting for 50% of China’s total distant water catch and worth some $5 billion.

China’s gain is often to the detriment of countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, EJF says, with the highest number of illegal fishing incidents reported in the West African region between 2015 and 2019.

“Illegal fishing and overcapacity in the Ghanaian trawl sector is having catastrophic impacts on coastal communities across the country,” EJF’s Chief Operating Officer Max Schmid told VOA by phone, with some 80-90 percent of local fishers in Ghana reporting a decline in income over the last five years.

Women — who are usually responsible for processing and selling the local catch — are often hit hardest by the loss of income, turning to transactional sex, according to EJF, a phenomenon locally dubbed “fish for sex.”

[…] It’s also becoming more and more common for the Chinese vessels to catch small pelagic fish, which are the main population caught by small-scale fishers, and then sell them back to communities for profit, the organization found. [Source]

The Chinese government has played a notable role in supporting China’s DWF. In 2019, the Chinese government provided about $1.8 billion in harmful subsidies to its DWF, amounting to 44 percent of its total fisheries subsidies, despite its DWF accounting for only 22 percent of China’s total catch. While China’s DWF has evolved from being entirely state-owned to mostly privately owned, many of its important actors still rely heavily on investment from state-owned enterprises and loans from state-owned banks, and as another report stated, China’s DWF “would not be profitable without [state] subsidies.” China’s DWF is also strategically important for ensuring China’s national food security, and many of China’s global fishing bases have therefore been officially integrated into Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. In a recent op-ed for the Hong Kong Free Press, Paul Harris, Professor of Global and Environmental Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong, provided more detail on the Chinese government’s interest in expanding its DWF:

The Chinese government promotes overfishing around the world by helping to pay for the building of large long-range trawlers, providing fleets with forecasts of where and when certain species are most prevalent around the world, and providing tax exemptions and extensive subsidies, notably for fuel. The latter increased by ten times in the five years up to 2011, when the government stopped releasing statistics, thereby making its promises to reduce those subsidies difficult to assess. The government also supports the fleet through the construction of port bases around the world as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

[…] In addition to hoovering up fish, China’s distant-water fishing fleet has been used for the country’s territorial and military expansion. According to Tabitha Mallory at the University of Washington, China “has geopolitical motivations for wanting a global fishing presence. China’s strength as a fishing nation contributes to China’s global sea power, which gives China more influence in the international system.”

Chinese fishers serve as a “maritime militia,” with China acknowledging that its distant-water fishing vessels are “pseudo-military instruments.” Chinese fisherman are given “basic military training” and education in “safeguarding Chinese sovereignty.” Armed fishing boats are often used to harass vessels from other countries’ and to assert China’s claims of sovereignty over disputed waters, such as around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. They also serve as mobile surveillance stations for the Chinese military. [Source]

Steve Trent, founder and chief executive of EFJ, highlighted the difficulty of fully addressing the issues related to China’s DWF: “This isn’t one geography or one jurisdiction, but many, primarily across the developing world. It’s not just one vessel, but many, quite often the majority, that are fishing illegally, that have clearly documented human rights abuses and that are disguising the true nature of their operations.” Transparency is an essential part of the solution, as EFJ argues, in order to “reinforce accountability of vessel owners; increase accessibility to actionable information; improve monitoring of vessels by states and drive transparency in seafood supply chains to prevent IUU products reaching markets.” (Transparency is also a necessary element in addressing the human rights issues in China’s cotton industry, as experts argue.) Nichola Daunton at Euronews summarized some of the main recommendations of the EFJ report to hold those in China’s DWF accountable for any IUU or human rights abuses:

The report makes a number of recommendations to the Chinese state, including:

• Ensuring that the information on Chinese DWF vessels is up to date in the FAO Global Record of Fishing Vessels.
• Asking China to cooperate with foreign governments to clarify Chinese ‘hidden’ ownership in their fishing sectors.
• Ratifying and implementing the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention C188 to address labour abuses. It also recommends a list of further protections for workers on board vessels, including making forced or bonded labour a specific offence.

The charity also makes recommendations to states that act as local flag carriers for the CDWF and to coastal, port and key market states that the CDWF operates in, including:

• Ensuring all suspected fisheries infringements by CDWF vessels are thoroughly investigated and that sanctions are imposed.
• Ensuring that the number of fishing licences issued is sustainable for the ecosystem.
• Phasing out bottom trawling due to its well known negative ecological impacts.
• Adopt minimum transparency laws for vessels operating within their EEZ. [Source]

To end illegal fishing for good, we have to start with #transparency in global fisheries.

States can act to protect food security and our ocean, to end environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

Our ten principles are a starting point for action:https://t.co/VPmJfrVJS5

— Environmental Justice Foundation (@ejfoundation) April 11, 2022