China - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 269

International Energy Agency refuted these optimistic claims, arguing that
Chinese statistics were inaccurate. A further justification has been that
hydro projects like the Three Gorges dam have no emissions. Pointing to
per capita emissions is a common argument visitors hear.
The consensus (at least of the Europeans) in favor of the Kyoto Protocol
eroded in the decade after Kyoto. In the United States, President Bush
frequently denounced the Chinese exemption. The Europeans were not
so outspoken but grew less enthusiastic about the protocol as its burdens
became more apparent. Furthermore, during this period the Chinese
economy grew rapidly and so did its level of greenhouse gas emissions.
It burgeoned from a moderate emitter in 1988 at the time of the Toronto
conference to the biggest emitter. At the annual conference of the parties
at Copenhagen in 2009, China took an active role in removing specific
targets and accused the United States, Germany, and the industrial coun-
tries of bullying the developing countries. Most observers considered it
was China that tried to domineer the session. The motive appeared to be
that the PRC feared that within a few years it would be considered ripe
for limits. The top leaders of the world were at Copenhagen: President
Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Nicolas Sarkozy
of France, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom.
Premier Wen Jiabao led the Chinese delegation. As negotiations got more
difficult, Wen Jiabao refused to participate and withdrew to his hotel
room. The conference ended in disarray.
Birth Control: China is well aware that its huge population figures are bad.
This is not just an environmental concern but also an economic one. Since
the Communists came to power in 1949, their policies have shifted several
times. At first, Mao Zedong favored a large population. The Communists
had needed manpower for their army and still feared a counterattack by
the Nationalists. The decade of warfare with the Japanese was fresh on
their minds. In 1952, the country was short of food, with many dying.
Mao rejected the idea that the cause was too many people. He wrote that:
It is a good thing that China has a large population. Even if China's pop-
ulation multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution:
the solution is production. The absurd argument of western bourgeois
economists, like Malthus, that increase of population cannot keep pace
with increase in production was not only thoroughly refuted in theory by
Marxists long ago, but has also been completely exploded by the realities in
the Soviet Union and the Liberated areas of China after their revolutions. 10