At the Xi-Obama summit in Forbidden City last month in the wake of the Beijing APEC meeting, both leaders made their bold commitment to climate change. The Joint Sino-U.S. Statement on Climate Change, issued on November 12th, the U.S. agreed to improve its effort to mitigate the threat of global warming, by reducing its emission of carbon dioxide by 26% to 28% by 2025, compared with its level of 2005. The Chinese side agreed that, by 2030, it shall reach its peak of carbon emission, and raise the use of non-fossil energy to about 20% of its then primary energy consumption.

These commitments represent a significant challenge to both Washington and Beijing, and without serious implementation of respective commitment and significant cooperation between the two sides, they run a risk that their targets may fail to realize.

For America, the Obama administration already committed to cut 17% of carbon emission from 2005-2020 in 2009 before the UN COP15 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. This action reversed the George W. Bush administration’s policy to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Given the pressure of global warming, the current U.S. government has taken an important and necessary decision to address the problem, while catalyzing a worldwide movement to follow suit, so various countries would, hopefully, pay their own contribution to combat the common threat. The White House has especially eyed those newly developing economies such as China and India. Because of India’s quick economic rise, Beijing and New Delhi will become the new major emitters.

For its part, before the Copenhagen summit China also made a courageous commitment to reducing carbon intensity by 40%-45% from 2005 to 2020 (lowering its carbon emission per unit of grass domestic production by 40%-45% with the aforementioned period). At that time, this was quite an aggressive commitment Beijing could make. However, it could not entice the U.S. government enough, given the speed of China’s economic development that expanded three fold from 2000-2012. Should its energy structure and efficiency remain inadequate, China’s carbon emission could increase some 800% to 900% from 2005 to 2020 even if China would fulfill its promise of reducing carbon intensity.

In Copenhagen, China and other countries of the BASIC group rejected the U.S. pressure to make further commitment. China’s decision made sense as its total emission at that time was still behind that of the U.S., let alone its per capita level. China’s aggregated emission in history was even way behind. Nevertheless, given the rapid economic expansion ever since, China’s total economic output is now some 60% of the U.S. Presently China’s carbon emission has accounted for some 27% of the world total, doubling that of America, and its per capita emission is almost half of the U.S. already.