A party congress appears set to give Xi Jinping five more years in power. He has big goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and big challenges.
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Oct. 18, 2022
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The world’s most important non-change in leadership is happening right now in China.
At a Communist Party congress this week, Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader for the last 10 years, is all but certain to secure another five years in the job. Xi’s recent predecessors each left office after about a decade to protect China from abuses of power like those during the chaotic Mao era. Xi is expected to cast this precedent aside, taking the country down a more authoritarian path as economic growth teeters and tensions flare with the West.
My colleagues in and around China are covering this pivotal moment. I’m going to focus on what it might mean for the climate.
Xi has ramped up China’s ambitions for reducing carbon emissions and slowing global warming. He reiterated those goals in typically grandiose language this week. (“We must uphold and act on the principle that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.”) But he has also allied himself with a leader whose actions are threatening to throw the global climate fight in reverse: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Climate change will continue to test China, and Xi
This summer, China sweltered through more than two months of record-high temperatures, the country’s most prolonged heat wave since modern records began in 1961. The Yangtze River dried to a trickle. Factories halted production to reduce the burden on power grids. The government’s chief forecaster, Chen Lijuan, told a Communist Party news outlet that the extreme highs could become a “new normal.”
Oct. 18, 2022
You’re reading the Climate Forward newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Your must-read guide to the climate crisis.
:The world’s most important non-change in leadership is happening right now in China.
At a Communist Party congress this week, Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader for the last 10 years, is all but certain to secure another five years in the job. Xi’s recent predecessors each left office after about a decade to protect China from abuses of power like those during the chaotic Mao era. Xi is expected to cast this precedent aside, taking the country down a more authoritarian path as economic growth teeters and tensions flare with the West.
My colleagues in and around China are covering this pivotal moment. I’m going to focus on what it might mean for the climate.
Xi has ramped up China’s ambitions for reducing carbon emissions and slowing global warming. He reiterated those goals in typically grandiose language this week. (“We must uphold and act on the principle that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.”) But he has also allied himself with a leader whose actions are threatening to throw the global climate fight in reverse: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Climate change will continue to test China, and Xi
This summer, China sweltered through more than two months of record-high temperatures, the country’s most prolonged heat wave since modern records began in 1961. The Yangtze River dried to a trickle. Factories halted production to reduce the burden on power grids. The government’s chief forecaster, Chen Lijuan, told a Communist Party news outlet that the extreme highs could become a “new normal.” “