an international negotiation process and debate over global climate co-operation. A centrepiece of this process is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. More than ten years later, the world now faces the challenge of choosing the direction of its ongoing efforts to deal with and combat anthropogenic climate change. At the top of the agenda is the issue of how to progress in the wake of, and beyond, the Kyoto Protocol—the controversial declaration of ambitions from 1997, in which developed countries have committed themselves to limiting their emissions of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is commonly regarded as the most important greenhouse gas. Among the nations of the world, the United States and China are the leading carbon dioxide emitters, but of the two only China has approved the Kyoto Protocol. However, the treaty does not impose any quantitative restrictions on China regarding its emissions. The aim of this report is to analyse the following question: What incentives, and what willingness and prospects, exist for more extensive participation by modern China in future international climate co-operation? The climate issue may be viewed from a variety of perspectives. With Chinese conditions in mind, three dominate. These are (i) science, (ii) domestic policy, and (iii) foreign policy. Each of them sheds a different light on the issue. The scientific perspective on climate is represented in China by an academic community with few channels to the much narrower circle of people that formulate and epitomise the two political climate perspectives. Alike in many ways, these, in turn, differ in that they are driven by separate paradigms. Whereas the main underlying concern of Chinese domestic policy is social stability, foreign policy is characterised by a strongly perceived need to uphold and defend China’s status and integrity in the eyes or the international community. Of course, climate science and domestic and foreign climate policy all interact and influence each other. However, in order to better grasp the ways in which the climate issue is perceived in China, it is helpful to view these perspectives in parallel, rather than intertwined. For an outside observer, such a stance may be helpful in discerning such mechanisms and features that might cause confusion and make constructive international climate co-operation difficult. A concrete example of such confusion is the process by which the country’s political leadership has arrived at its current position of openness towards the notion of China as a host to projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. Depending on the insight and vantage point of the observer, this position may be understood as having taken shape either inscrutably and haphazardly, or steadily and consistently. China is a developing country. This general statement lies at the heart of the country’s standpoints towards international climate co-operation. It also constitutes the basis for at least six important priorities, which together envelop China’s involvement in climate issues as well as all its perceptions of the field. Without ranking them, these six priorities are: development, economic growth, sustainability, energy security, technological advancement and strategic development security. They are briefly described and commented on in the following paragraphs. The relative importance attributed to the different priorities varies depending on the context in which the climate issue is addressed. The term “context” is here meant to include the cast of actors involved, as well as their understandings of the set of relevant perspectives (i.e. science, and domestic and foreign policy) in combination with numerous other factors of greater or lesser significance. 

Development is a central concept in Chinese politics, where it should be understood in a positivist sense as a technology-oriented process of societal improvement. Modernisation is another expression of the same aspiration, which has bearing on domestic as well as on foreign policy. If the leadership fails to maintain the spirit of a positive development trend, it essentially endangers its claim to legitimacy as the people’s representative and agent. Therein lies the domestic importance of development. In terms of foreign policy, its significance pertains partly to strategic interests (cf. “strategic development security” below), and partly to international status. To China, prominence in the competition among nations is an important matter, and development is seen as an essential field in which the country must not lose ground, but advance. Economic growth is seen both as a prerequisite for the ambitions of development and modernisation, and as their chief indicator. It is mainly regarded as a domestic concern. Protectionism, national as well as local, constitutes a significant part of the ideas and ideals of how to create and shape economic growth. China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation might, however, gradually influence such perceptions. Sustainability, in turn, concerns the need not to limit the space for human sustenance, for growth and development. Through this priority, environmental issues have made their way onto China’s political agenda. The major sustainability concern, which has confronted the Chinese leadership for decades, however, is more socially and demographically oriented. China’s efforts to curb population growth include the well-known, or infamous, single-child policy, which allows only one child per family. In China, sustainability issues are primarily considered a domestic matter. Energy security is also a sustainability issue of sorts, and one which is intimately connected to the challenge of climate change. It is also of particular significance in China. The country is dependent on domestic fossil coal as its predominant source of primary energy, but logistic difficulties, shortcomings in quality and efficiency, technical limitations, etc., are all causes for concern. At the same time, however, the importance of safeguarding energy supplies constitutes an argument for China’s sustained focus on the further development of so-called clean coal technologies. Technological advancement naturally carries domestic as well as scientific weight. This is expressed through the pursuit of a political environment that encourages and supports domestic innovation as well as research, development and demonstration. This priority also has relevance from a foreign-policy perspective, for example as a component of bilateral and multilateral development co-operation. The concept of technology transfer, which in China is seen as an important part of the wording and spirit of the Climate Convention, is often associated with such contexts. Strategic development security is in essence an expression of risk aversion. Here, security is contrasted with the risk of jeopardising the momentum of development achieved over the past quarter century of reforms. In defence of this priority, the main argument is that China must not engage in experiments with novel development paths. The country has an obligation to its people to pursue courses of development that are secure, in the sense that they have already been proven effective elsewhere. Thus, China cannot assume a leadership role as an international testing ground for new, and therefore uncertain, policies and measures, as these might negatively affect the pace of development. As is indicated by their descriptions above, each of the six priorities presented here is related to the other ones. They are also, though in varying degrees, related to three key concerns, which centre on China’s rights, on the obligations of the international community, and on natural limitations. The illustration below shows one way of  representing the connection between the major priorities and these three key concerns.