Author: Daniel Abebe and Jonathan S. Masur

by Daniel Abebe and Jonathan S. Masur

We are very grateful to Professors Ginsburg, Vandenbergh, Cohen, and Wiener for engaging in this dialogue with us. The value of discussing these issues with such leading scholars in the field cannot be overstated.

Professor Ginsburg’s very helpful comments push us to focus on two main points: (1) the U.S. has similar internal dynamics that make committing to a climate change agreement difficult; and (2) China can more easily implement an agreement when it commits to “environmental policy  . . . over growth.” Professor Wiener’s post makes the first point as well. We agree that the US and other countries have internal divisions that complicate their attempts to deal with climate change.  We argue, however, that the differences in China are of a far greater magnitude than the blue state/red State divisions in the US and have more serious consequences for climate change. Eastern China is 5 times richer than Western China and the most serious fault lines that produce social instability—rich and poor, industrialized and agrarian, urbanized and rural—fit the East/West divide.  Moreover, in the US, blue states turn red and vice-versa; the CCP must satisfy its constituencies through economic growth, not representative government.  The cost of failure is much higher for the CCP (and China) than for the Democratic or Republican parties in the US.

Second, we agree completely that “when” China commits to climate change, it has the capacity to be effective in implementation. The question is how we should understand China’s incentives and when we can anticipate that this commitment will occur.  We don’t argue that it is impossible.  Rather, we argue that extant studies of China’s incentives miss the fact that the cost of restructuring internal center/province governance to address climate change is much higher than currently anticipated and that the projections of future emissions are too low because they don’t examine China’s internal dynamics.  We suggest that China will deal with climate change once it is more comfortable with the status of its domestic challenges, and that such a time will come later than most analysts predict.  Kyoto and Copenhagen suggest that more time is needed. While we certainly agree with Professor Ginsburg’s excellent comment that the US’s federal structure and adversarial legal culture can be an obstacle for climate change, we think that the internal obstacles that China faces—the necessity of aggressive growth policies, the social instability and East/West divisions—might be greater long-term obstacles for climate change.

Similarly, Professor Wiener may well be correct that internal dynamics will push China towards—rather than away from—an international climate change agreement. The mechanisms he points to are undoubtedly real, and we do not doubt that they exert some force. We suspect, however, that the opposite forces we describe in the Article will dominate any pro-regulatory tendencies, at least in the short term. Domestic Chinese movements for environmental protection are dwarfed by ongoing domestic demand for economic growth. And while Western China might have something to gain from a transition to a greener economy, it has much more to lose from curbs on cheap coal-based electricity and carbon-intensive cement production, to name just two industries.

Finally, we agree with Professors Vandenbergh, Cohen, and Wiener that innovative solutions—supply-chain pressures or the provision of extra pollution credits—might hold the key to inducing Chinese compliance with an international climate change accord. We hope that their optimism regarding these measures will turn out to be well-placed. We wish to emphasize only that we believe that the cost of implementing even these more creative and politically palatable approaches will be high—higher than any American policymaker yet realizes. Until the United States and Europe confront these costs squarely, a workable carbon emission agreement will remain out of reach.

by Daniel Abebe and Jonathan S. Masur

[Daniel Abebe and Jonathan S. Masur are Assistant Professors of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Their Article may be found here.]

On July 8th and 9th, 2009, the New York Times published two seemingly unconnected articles about China. One focused on China’s rejection of an agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, while the other concerned clashes between Uighurs and Han in Xinjiang Province in Western China. Although these two stories appeared to have little to do with one another, they were actually closely linked. China’s unwillingness to join a climate change agreement is related to its internal political, economic, and social dynamics: the regime’s future depends on its ability to ensure social stability in Western China by guaranteeing high rates of economic growth. A climate change agreement threatens this continued growth, and thus threatens China’s internal balance.

Scholars miss this because they mistakenly treat China as a “black box”: a unitary state whose domestic idiosyncrasies are unimportant. This error has consequences, producing overly optimistic projections about China’s incentives to fight climate change and producing an inability to appreciate the international impact of China’s internal challenges.

The conventional wisdom on China’s willingness to join a climate change agreement reflects this error. The consensus is that the world would benefit from such an agreement, and that such an agreement would be worthless without China. Scholars acknowledge that joining an agreement is not in China’s self-interest. China’s will lose from emissions limitations, while China has little to gain because it stands to lose relatively little if global warming occurs. Despite this difficult problem, scholars conclude that China can be persuaded relatively easily through a series of side payments and that this can be accomplished in a manner that is palatable to the U.S. and Europe.

We believe that this conclusion is flawed. We pry the lid off the Chinese “black box” and explore the impact of internal dynamics on China’s interest in an agreement. Our conclusions suggest that it will be far more difficult to reach a meaningful agreement in the immediate future.

China has several striking internal characteristics. First, China has delegated tremendous authority to provincial and local governments. Second, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) success is measured by its ability to create private-sector economic growth. Third, China encompasses an industrialized, prosperous East, and a more agrarian and poor West. Among industrialized nations, China is remarkable in its domestic heterogeneity.

The presence of “Two Chinas” will create problems for negotiating a meaningful agreement. First, the CCP has adopted economic growth to justify its rule. In Eastern China, the CCP’s growth policy worked. Western China, however, is far behind: per capita GDP in Western China is less than half of Eastern China, resulting in income inequality and social instability. Economic growth in Western China has become important and the CCP has prioritized it. China is likely to balk at any agreement that might imperil growth.

Second, as a result of its growth-driven delegation of power, the CCP suffers from an erosion of state capacity: the provinces often ignore the central government, frequently without meaningful consequences. Environmental regulatory agencies are often subordinate to the bodies they regulate.

Finally, the vast majority of economic and scientific projections appear to have underestimated China’s future emissions by failing to account for internal heterogeneity. Eastern China is already industrialized and wealthy; it will likely move towards cleaner technologies and services. Western China is poorer and more agrarian, and the development pattern for such an area involves a shift towards industrialization and higher per capita energy consumption—and Western China is moving in this direction.

Every quantitative forecast of Chinese emissions—save for two—uses only national-level data and washes out distinctions between East and West. Of the two that employ sub-national data, one projects higher emissions than any of the national-level studies; the other projects much higher emissions. This suggests that Chinese carbon emissions in the future may be greater than the models have anticipated, increasing the cost to China of an agreement. Given the importance of economic growth, the structure of Chinese governance, and the need to develop Western China, the prospects for China choosing to join such an agreement in the immediate future seem slim.