How China and India stopped Obama

An extraordinarily energetic effort by US President Barack Obama to get developing economies, including China and India, to commit themselves to carbon dioxide emission cuts was beaten back on Friday by a rare manifestation of Sino-Indian solidarity at the Copenhagen climate change conference.

It wasn’t always a pretty picture. At least on one occasion, push literally came to shove, conference delegates and observers told DNA. “Think of it as war minus the shooting,” said an American observer.

Somewhat frustrated by the absence of progress even on the final day of the conference, a weary Obama at one stage stormed into a meeting attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President Jacob Zuma.

“Obama and (Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton turned up uninvited, which had one Chinese protocol officer apoplectic,” said the observer. “Upon entering the room, Obama assumed the manner of a schoolmaster dealing with truant schoolboys, telling them that he didn’t want them ‘negotiating in secret’.” It was from that 45-minute meeting that a non-binding political accord emerged, which Obama celebrated as a step forward, but which doesn’t really pin down India and China to much more than voluntary pledges.

In fact, there had been much wily truancy afoot on Friday. In what was perceived as a calculated diplomatic insult, Premier Wen did not attend two impromptu meetings that Obama had convened earlier in the day; Wen instead sent three Chinese diplomats. Obama gave voice to his exasperation, saying that it would have been nice to negotiate with someone who actually had political authority.

“That was very unusual,” said Julian Wong, an energy policy and technology analyst with Center for American Progress. “I wouldn’t have thought this was something the Chinese would pull off, since they’re very conscious of the concept of ‘giving face’.”

The American delegation’s exasperation appeared to be directed particularly at Chinese-led efforts all week to resist any attempt to hold developing economies accountable for their pledges of cuts in emission intensity - through an international verification mechanism. In his speech at the conference on Friday, Wen reiterated China’s commitment to abiding by its voluntary target for emission cuts, and pledged to “increase transparency… and international cooperation”.

Obama wasn’t easily persuaded. Speaking right after Wen, he deviated from his prepared text to pointedly criticise China’s unwillingness to be transparent about its emission reduction efforts. “I don’t know how you can have an international agreement where we’re all not sharing information and ensuring we’re meeting our commitments,” Obama said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

The latent Sino-US tension manifested itself somewhat more starkly when Chinese officials physically blocked American reporters from entering a room where Obama and Wen were to meet, according to a White House correspondent travelling with the US delegation. An incensed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was “jostled about a bit in the scrum”.

Although Wong sees these as just part of “conference theatrics”, he acknowledges that at the heart of the problem is the fact that China’s word on its emission commitments isn’t trusted. “But then the world doesn’t trust the US either.”

India’s hardball negotiating strategy alongside China too came in for criticism from French President Nicholas Sarkozy. But the steadfast alliance among developing economies won India rare praise from China. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Wen and Singh “agreed to further develop the strategic cooperative partnership” between their two countries.

Climate change activists may claim that India’s and China’s reluctance to commit themselves to binding emission cuts puts them on the wrong side of history, but the two countries that have seen their bilateral relations strained in recent months are for now celebrating their ‘Asian solidarity’.