SCIO press conference on 'Responding to Climate Change: China's Policies and Actions' white paper
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 2, 2021
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General Secretary Xi said that addressing climate change is not something that others asked us to do; we are doing so on our own initiative. How do you understand this remark? How will addressing climate change affect China's economic and social development? Thank you.
Ye Min:
Thank you. General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed many times that addressing climate change is not what others asked us to do; we are doing so on our own initiative. It is essential to China's sustainable development, and shows our commitment to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. Coping with climate change is an important starting point to promote China's high-quality economic development. We will continue to inject power into high-quality economic development by establishing and improving an economic structure that facilitates green, low-carbon and circular development, building a clean and low-carbon energy system, advocating for a green and low-carbon lifestyle, and promoting the adjustment of economy, industry, energy, transportation and consumption structure. Coping with climate change is also an important part of high-level ecological environment protection. It will forge great synergy with pollution control, ecological protection and other measures, and will improve environmental quality from the source, enrich environmental governance means, improve environmental governance efficiency, and save environmental governance costs. Addressing climate change is also China's effort and contribution to promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. China adheres to the principles of multilateralism and "common but differentiated responsibilities;" actively participates in and leads global climate governance; promotes the comprehensive, balanced and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement; firmly supports the reasonable demands of other developing countries; continuously promotes the global climate governance system to be more fair, reasonable, beneficial and cooperative; and promotes the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.
Coping with climate change well is significant to accelerating the formation of a new development paradigm with the domestic market as the mainstay and domestic and overseas markets reinforcing each other. It is also significant to exploring a new way of high-quality development that gives priority to ecological conservation and green development. This is both a challenge and an opportunity.
As the largest developing country, China is still facing imbalances and inadequacies in development, and shoulders a series of arduous tasks, such as developing the economy, improving people's livelihoods, and controlling pollution. Given these facts, in the process of coping with climate change and achieving carbon peak and carbon neutralization, we should realistically base ourselves on China's national conditions, development stage and actual capacity; take a systematic approach to overall development; and properly handle the relationship between development and emission reduction, overall and local development, and short-term and medium and long-term development. We must also make steady, orderly and scientific deployment, and achieve solid progress.
At the same time, we must fully realize that taking stronger actions to deal with climate change and taping the huge potential of greenhouse gas emission reduction brought by the development of new economy, new technology, new business forms, institutional and policy innovation and reform in various fields are important driving forces to promote high-quality development. This will continue to inject impetus to green and low-carbon development, promote the comprehensive green transformation of the economy and society, and realize the fundamental transformation of development modes. Thank you.
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