China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change

Sanna Kopra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138557604
• eBook ISBN: 9781351365505
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As American leadership over climate change declines, China has begun to identify itself as a great power by formulating ambitious climate policies.

Based on the premise that great powers have unique responsibilities, this book explores how China's rise to great power status transforms notions of great power responsibility in general and international climate politics in particular. The author looks empirically at the Chinese party-state's conceptions of state responsibility, discusses the influence of those notions on China's role in international climate politics, and considers both how China will act out its climate responsibility in the future and the broader implications of these actions. Alongside the argument that the international norm of climate responsibility is an emerging attribute of great power responsibility, Kopra develops a normative framework of great power responsibility to shed new light on the transformations China's rise will yield and the kind of great power China will prove to be.

The book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, China studies, foreign policy studies, international organizations, international ethics and environmental politics.

1 Introduction

There has been much talk about responsibility in world politics in recent years. In particular, the allocation of responsibility has been central to international climate negotiations, in which the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities has been agreed upon as a guiding principle. As these negotiations have made clear, however, responsibility is a remarkably vague concept, and its meaning in world politics in particular remains altogether uncertain. In negotiations with stakes as high as Earth’s climate, a few questions about responsibility thus need to be asked. For example, what is responsibility? When it comes to states, for what are they responsible and to whom? On the international stage, who judges responsibility, its assignment and its fulfilment? What do states need to do, or refrain from doing, in order to be viewed as responsible members of international society?

Responsibility has become an especially popular word in speculations about whether the so-called ‘rise’ of China will pose a risk or an opportunity for the world. Likewise, an extensive body of academic literature has discussed whether China is, or will become, a responsible player in world politics (e.g. Chan 2006; Clark 2014; Deng 2008; Gill 2007; Gill et al. 2007; Patrick 2010; Shambaugh 2013; Xia 2001; Zhang & Austin 2001). Political debate over China’s responsibility has been particularly heated in international climate negotiations, where China has been accused of ‘being irresponsible’ and ‘blocking progress’ for years on end (e.g. Lynas 2009; Porter 2009; Vidal 2009). From an adjacent angle, academic research on China’s climate policy has focused on the country’s contributions to international climate negotiations, its climate policy decision-making process, its national interests in climate negotiations and its responsibility for causing climate change (e.g. Chen, G. 2009; Chen 2012; Ella 2016; Gong 2011; Harris 2011; Harris & Yu 2009; Marks 2010; Moore 2011). In both contexts, China’s policies have largely been evaluated with a rubric of Western interests and expectations, and too little attention has been paid to China’s own notions of responsibility in international climate politics, particularly on what ethical basis the Chinese government considers itself to be responsible, for what, to whom and, above all, why (cf. Chen, Z. 2009; Foot 2001; Jin 2011; Jones 2014; Scott 2010; Yeophantong 2013; Zhang & Austin 2001).

In this book, I investigate China’s evolving notions of great power responsibility, both in general and in the particular context of international climate politics.¹ To some extent, China’s rise to the status of a great power can be perceived as a typical change in the international order and thus merely another factor that will shape the diplomatic practices of negotiating procedures and rules about specific international issues. However, I presuppose that China’s rise to great power status and its increasing engagement in international practices will not only shape the contemporary international order but also generate a transformation of international norms. China is no doubt relevant to discussions of all norms of international responsibility because its rise could facilitate more profound changes in international society. In the context of climate responsibility in particular, China’s role is especially central, both theoretically and practically – not least because China is now the world’s largest carbon emitter, so presents a tremendous challenge to mitigating climate change and human security around the world. Consequently, China’s engagement in international climate politics is imperative, for without its participation, no global effort to combat climate change will succeed. At the same time, despite its miraculous economic development, China remains a developing country, in which millions of people continue to live in poverty. These trends raise a variety of political and ethical questions about the expectations of China’s role in international climate politics, including in relation to international justice and the allocation of responsibility.

Regarding theory, this book builds on and contributes to the English School of international relations, which maintains that states form an international society, the workings of which great powers have special responsibility to safeguard. Because I find it more interesting, as well as more important, to analyse how such responsibilities are constructed and allocated in practice, I assume that states – and individuals – have ethical responsibilities. Indeed, I argue that responsibility is always a situational ethics, the content of which is continuously made and remade via social practices in a process that I call responsibilisation. During that process, by using language and action, states and non-state actors attempt to create a common understanding of what it means to be responsible in international society in specific contexts. As a result, realising understandings of responsibility in international politics always involves competition. Today, when states define and distribute state responsibilities as well as great power responsibilities, the rising power of China undoubtedly plays a key role and will continue to do so in the future. In that sense, international climate politics is an especially interesting case of China’s emerging notions of great power responsibility, for China has increasingly identified itself as a great power with great responsibility and, in turn, formulated ambitious climate policies to live up to that responsibility. As US leadership in great power responsibility for climate change declines in the era of President Donald Trump, China’s emergence as a leader of global efforts to tackle climate change becomes more possible than ever before.

In an attempt to answer the looming question in international relations about how a great power should be defined in today’s global era, I draw from the pluralism–solidarism debate within the English School. In particular, I focus on two international norms of responsibility – great power responsibility and climate responsibility – and investigate their interaction, as well as China’s contribution to each. In that way, I demonstrate that responsibility is a principal criterion that states seeking recognition as great powers must fulfil and has constituted the ideological basis for the rule of the so-called ‘great power club’ since the early 1800s. With the end of the Cold War and China’s rise in international status, the United States elevated responsibility as an imperative in the great power club. Accordingly, China’s alleged irresponsibility can thus be viewed as the primary reason why it has not been accepted as a full member in the club. However, as climate responsibility increasingly becomes an international norm with which states, including great powers, must comply if they want to be and be recognised as responsible members of international society, China’s central role in the institutionalisation of climate responsibility has become increasingly apparent. At the same time, the import of China’s contribution cannot be understood without first understanding the political, economic and cultural-historical context in which China’s practices of state responsibility have evolved. To that end, I study not only China’s role in international climate negotiations but also the underlying domestic interests and values that have shaped its contributions to those negotiations.

Necessity of normative inquiry in international relations theory

Climate change is not only a neutral, natural and scientific phenomenon but, perhaps more importantly, a discursively created political problem that raises a range of moral questions about how humans should and do respond (e.g. Gardiner 2011; Gardiner et al. 2010). Instead of moral questions, however, traditional international relations studies have sought to discover in the first place whether and then, if appropriate, how and why states can cooperate to resolve global problems, including climate change. Realists argue that, in an anarchic world, there is little room for cooperation and always the risk of conflict. Conversely, liberals maintain that international cooperation is possible as well as necessary to address global challenges such as climate change and to prevent conflicts. By extension, many neorealist and neoliberal institutionalists focus on problem solving, especially regarding the potential role of international regimes in resolving conflicts and motivating cooperation among states. Although both sets of thinkers agree that states generally cooperate because ‘it is in their interest to do so’ (Hurrell & Kingsbury 1992, 23), they also tend to take actors and their interests as givens and pay little attention to the normative aspects of politics, including environmental politics. Unlike those ways of thinking, constructivism can offer unique insights into climate responsibility, for a significant, if not the most significant, part of international climate politics is ‘discourse and dialogue concerning what policies or activities, ours as well as theirs, are desirable of advisable or appropriate or acceptable or tolerable or prudent or politic or judicious or justified in the circumstances’ (Jackson 2000, 37). Climate change discourses define the nature of the phenomenon of climate change, its causes and its consequences and thus situate and control how climate-related issues are conceived and what actions are possible and prohibited in response. However, discourse is only one part of responsibility; the other, more critical part is its demonstration in action. Among its other limitations, constructivism does not consider the specific social contexts in which discourses and norms are produced. In particular, they tend to dismiss the intentionality of state behaviour as well as the role of (great) power in international society.

To clarify how states define and ought to define and fulfil their climate responsibility, in this book I integrate ‘empirical knowledge and normative reasoning’ (Reus–Smit 2013, 602). Although I draw inspiration from both liberal institutionalists’ work on international organisations and constructivists’ work on collective identities and discourses, my approach to climate responsibility differs profoundly from both. One reason for my departure from those ways of thinking is that they tend to frame environmental changes as technical and economic problems that have to be solved by collective inter-state action. Consequently, they fail to recognise that ‘states are themselves (or alternatively, the state’s system is itself, through generating certain practices on the part of states) prime environmental destroyers’ (Paterson 2000, 2). Another more important reason is that liberal institutionalists and constructivists tend to treat norms and discourses as ‘independent variables’ and problem-solving endeavours such as international treaties and organisations as ‘dependent variables’ (Navari 2014, 209). In other words, they assume that norms and discourses cause change in a state’s domestic and international behaviour via processes of socialisation (e.g. Finnemore & Sikkink 1998; Wendt 1999). Such approaches suggest that norms and practices exist ‘out there’ and that states ‘internalise’ them in their social interactions. By contrast, I emphasise that responsibilities are not given or static but always produced and reproduced in social interactions. Values and intentions are therefore important factors in how international responsibilities are defined, allocated and implemented by agents in specific contexts (cf. Navari 2018).

Among other reasons for regime theory proving an inadequate theoretical framework for studying climate responsibility is that the many important international treaties developed in recent decades have been unable to respond effectively to ecological challenges due to three major problems. First, international environmental agreements are compromises and do not provide an adequate basis for ending, preventing or even decreasing environmental degradation. In short, international regimes are too ineffectual to secure effective international environmental protection. States regularly avoid agreeing to legally binding obligations and instead prefer to commit to non-binding guidelines or principles because failing to meet such guidelines does not expose them to international criticism. On pressing issues such as climate change, despite decades of negotiations, states have failed to agree upon a sufficiently appropriate international treaty as well as to define their respective responsibilities. In particular, before the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris, it seemed that international society was failing or had already failed to resolve the problem of climate change. Second, even when states manage to form international environmental agreements, their compliance is not guaranteed. That problem begs the question of how states can be ensured to implement and comply with the international rules that they have agreed to follow. When such actions are not taken, even the most serious international agreements become mere paper and fail to effect real difference. Third, international environmental agreements avoid reckoning with the ‘question of why global environmental change occurs in the first place’ (Paterson 2000, 3) and do not suggest that humans are part of Earth’s ecosystems instead of separate from them. On the contrary, just as human practices have significant impacts on the environment, environmental changes have harmful impacts on human lives.

Given those shortcomings, this book builds on the English School theory, which is not only a theory about practices and norms, but a practice-guiding, normative theoretical framework that attempts to direct how human practices ought to be. In his landmark volume The Anarchical Society published in 1977, Hedley Bull coined the conception international society, which later emerged as a key concept of the English School. According to Bull (2002 [1977], 13), international society exists

when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.

The concept of international society lays the foundation for the normative framework of the English School: that states have rights and responsibilities due to their membership in international society. At a minimum, governments need to take the opinions and interests of others into consideration, and they cannot focus only on their narrowly defined national interests but are obliged to cooperate with others. For example, climate change politics does not support the normative logic of a sovereign state’s right to do whatever it wants inside its borders, because states are bound to cooperate in order fulfil their climate- and environment-related obligations to other states. The capacity and willingness to accept and fulfil those responsibilities defines the status of their membership in international society, in which great powers have greater responsibilities than less powerful states. That idea makes the English School’s theory unique in the field of international relations as the sole theoretical framework that stresses the special responsibilities of great powers. Other theoretical perspectives such as realism and neoliberalism, by contrast, focus on the balance of power or the sphere of interests of great powers but fail to consider the normative underpinnings of great power management. As Chris Brown (2004, 11) points out, to neoreali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Responsibility in international society
• 3. Practices of state responsibility in China
• 4. China’s rise, climate change and great power responsibility
• 5. Great power management and debate over climate responsibility
• 6. The fulfilment of China’s climate responsibility
• 7. Great climate irresponsibles?
• Index