World News

China’s President Xi Jinping Promotes Environmental Cooperation and Reform

President Xi Jinping of China addressing workers at the Boeing plant at Paine Field in Everett, Washington

WASHINGTON – White House officials have praised President Xi Jinping’s anticipated promise of a national market for China in greenhouse gas quotas as a breakthrough in environmental cooperation and reform.

But to work well, Mr. Xi’s plan, expected to be announced in Washington on Friday, will demand big changes from a government accustomed to heavy-handed intervention and skewed statistics. It will take years of effort to build a substantial market that plays a major role in curbing emissions, and even then it could founder, like similar initiatives elsewhere, experts said.

China has had local trials underway since 2013, whose records have been mixed at best, kept alive by the liberal doling out of emissions permits or by cajoling companies to take part.

He and others said that Mr. Xi’s 2017 target date would be only the start of a national trading plan, which initially would include big companies in several industries.

Mr. Xi has come to Washington encircled by doubts that his government is serious about market overhauls, reducing pollution or shouldering global burdens. He hopes to rebuff those criticisms by promising to recruit the forces of capitalism to tame the smokestack pollution driving global warming.

So-called cap-and-trade programs limit the amount of pollution that can be emitted by companies and then let them pay competitive prices for a share of the quota. Companies that do not use their entire quota can sell the remainder, while those that need more than their quota would have to buy additional permits.

The intended result is a competitive market that induces companies to devise ways to reduce emissions.

But to make that happen, Chinese regulators must develop policies and trading platforms that give companies confidence they are being treated equally and transparently as they buy and sell emission permits, free of underhanded meddling and favoritism for rivals. If China’s stock market is any guide, plenty of investors say that their experience is often the opposite.

“There’s been a debate in Western countries about whether or not China is a market system,” said Qi Ye, the director of the Climate Policy Institute of Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Europe certainly is a market system, so if Europe cannot do an emissions trading system well, how would you expect China to have a successful carbon market?”

For now, United States officials and many environmental groups have welcomed the plan as a stimulus for negotiations on a new global climate change treaty in Paris in December. Chinese officials have said before that they wanted to establish a nationwide emissions market by 2017, but Mr. Xi’s declaration will put presidential weight behind that goal, they said.

“China starting its national emissions trading scheme will have a major signaling effect globally,” said Frank Jotzo, the director of the Center for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, who closely follows developments in China. “The world’s second-largest economy puts in place a price on carbon emissions, and this will be noted the world over. If successful, it can grow into playing a major role in facilitating China’s objectives for a cleaner energy and industrial system.”

Mr. Xi’s announcement would build on one he made last November, when he and President Obama announced an agreement that China’s carbon dioxide emissions would stop rising by around 2030, the first time that the Chinese government had given a clear goal for a peak.

A growing number of scientists now say that China’s slowing economy, and weakening dependence on heavy industry for growth, would make a peak by 2025 feasible.

China’s greenhouse gas emissions are about double those of the United States, the second-biggest polluter, and that has magnified international pressure on Beijing to do more to avert climate change. But Mr. Xi appears unlikely to budge from his more conservative peak date.

Experts and policy advisers said the proposed national carbon trading plan would test a government that, during stock market turbulence in recent months, has shown that it can swiftly turn against private investors and subvert transparency.

“You can envision there’s a lot of political and technical challenges ahead,” said Ranping Song, the developing country climate action manager for the World Resources Institute in Washington. “There’s no guarantee that this will go smoothly.

“Even if it’s national coverage, it will take time, a few years, for the government to ramp up its efforts. But this coming from the head of state, Xi, gives more confidence that this is going to be fairly significant and is a lot less likely to be watered down.”

Since 2013, China has experimented with pilot plans across seven economically varied areas, including Beijing and Guangdong Province, that allow designated companies to buy and sell the right to use power or burn fossil fuels and release carbon dioxide into the air.

The trial plans initially struggled with murky rules; reluctant companies picked by the government to take part; and regulators inexperienced in measuring how much pollution the factories, boilers and buildings release. Similar problems have troubled carbon markets in advanced economies like Europe and California, and several experts said China’s markets were improving.

“The performance of the trial markets has improved and is better than many expected,” said ZhongXiang Zhang, an economics professor at Tianjin University in northern China and author of a recent assessment of China’s emissions trading plans.

“This has established a basis of experience and lessons,” he said. “But developing a national market will still be a process.”

That process will start with big companies in several industrial sectors, including steel, chemicals and construction materials, setting quotas and prices so they start trading the right to consume power and fossil fuels, said Mr. Zhang and other researchers familiar with China’s plans.

He estimated that thousands of companies could be involved in the national market once it gets going. That would still be only a wedge of China’s huge economy, but ultimately the market could be far larger than the world’s current biggest emissions trading system, the European Union’s.

Chinese officials have been studying that market and others. But the lessons have not always been promising. Europe’s emissions trading system has stumbled amid criticism that it gave out emissions permits too generously and failed to make companies change their energy habits.

The challenges in China are compounded by unreliable statistics, corruption and local officials who have made blazing economic growth a point of honor. Overcoming those problems will demand far-reaching changes to the energy sector, so that trading in emissions translates into reduced consumption of coal and other polluting fuels, several experts said.

Under China’s plans, the government would not place an overall cap on carbon dioxide emissions, an idea the government has rejected as premature.

Instead, the system favored by Chinese policy makers would limit the emissions for designated companies in certain industries. The companies would obtain quotas for their emissions through allocations, auctions or initial purchases.

“Internally, among experts, there’s still some debate about whether a carbon market really is the right solution for China now,” said Dimitri de Boer, the vice chairman of China Carbon Forum, a group based in Beijing. “If the president says that is, it certainly puts weight behind the idea that this is going to happen, and that it will happen in a serious way.”

By Chris Buckley

World News

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Wins the First Round in France 2024 Election

Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party scored historic gains in France

Exit polls in France showed that Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party made huge gains to win the first round of election on Sunday. However, the final outcome will depend on how people trade votes in the days before next week’s run-off.

Exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay, and Elabe showed that the RN got about 34% of the vote. This was a big loss for President Emmanuel Macron, who called the early election after his party lost badly in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.

The National Rally (RN) easily won more votes than its opponents on the left and center, including Macron’s Together group, whose bloc was predicted to get 20.5% to 23% of the vote. Exit polls showed that the New Popular Front (NFP), a hastily put together left-wing alliance, would get about 29% of the vote.

The results of the exit polls matched what people said in polls before the election, which made Le Pen’s fans very happy. But they didn’t say for sure if the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Rally (RN) will be able to “cohabit” with the pro-EU Macron in a government after the runoff election next Sunday.

Voters in France Angry at Macron

Many French people have looked down on the National Rally (RN) for a long time, but now it is closer to power than it has ever been. A party known for racism and antisemitism has tried to clean up its image, and it has worked. Voters are angry at Macron, the high cost of living, and rising concerns about immigration.

Fans of Marine Le Pen waved French flags and sang the Marseillaise in the northern French district of Henin-Beaumont. The crowd cheered as Le Pen said, “The French have shown they are ready to turn the page on a power that is disrespectful and destructive.”

The National Rally’s chances of taking power next week will rest on what political deals its opponents make in the next few days. Right-wing and left-wing parties used to work together to keep the National Rally (RN) out of power, but the “republican front,” which refers to this group, is less stable than ever.

If no candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates and anyone else with 12.5% of the registered voters immediately move on to the second round. The district goes to the person who gets the most votes in the runoff.

France is likely to have a record number of three-way runoffs because so many people voted on Sunday. Experts say that these are much better for the National Rally (RN) than two-way games. Almost right away on Sunday night, the horse trade began.

Macron asked people to support candidates who are “clearly republican and democratic.” Based on what he has said recently, this would rule out candidates from the National Rally (RN) and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party. Leaders on the far left and the center left both asked their third-placed candidates to drop out.

Minority government

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of France Unbowed, said, “Our rule is simple and clear: not a single more vote for the National Rally.” But the center-right Republicans party, which split before the vote when some of its members joined the RN, didn’t say anything.

The president of the RN party, Jordan Bardella, who is 28 years old, said he was ready to be prime minister if his party gets a majority of seats. He has said he won’t try to make a minority government, and neither Macron nor the communist NFP will work with him.

“I will be a “cohabitation” Prime Minister, respectful of the constitution and of the office of President of the Republic, but uncompromising about the policies we will implement,” he said.

A few thousand anti-RN protesters met in Paris’s Republique square on Sunday night for a rally of the leftist alliance. The mood was gloomy.

Niya Khaldi, a 33-year-old teacher, said that the RN’s good results made her feel “disgust, sadness, and fear.”

“This is not how I normally act,” she said. “I think I came to reassure myself, to not feel alone.”

Election Runoff

The result on Sunday didn’t have much of an effect on the market. In early Asia-Pacific trade, the euro gained about 0.23%. Fiona Cincotta, a senior markets expert at City Index in London, said she was glad the outcome “didn’t come as a surprise.”

“Le Pen had a slightly smaller margin than some of the polls had pointed to, which may have helped the euro a little bit higher on the open,” she noted. “Now everyone is waiting for July 7 to see if the second round supports a clear majority or not. So it does feel like we’re on the edge of something.”

Some pollsters thought the RN would win the most seats in the National Assembly, but Elabe was the only one who thought the party would win all 289 seats in the run-off. Seat projections made after the first round of voting are often very wrong, and this race is no exception.

On Sunday night, Reuters reported there were no final results for the whole country yet, but they were due in the next few hours. In France, exit polls have usually been very accurate.

Voter turnout was high compared to previous parliamentary elections. This shows how passionate people are about politics after Macron made the shocking and politically risky decision to call a vote in parliament.

Mathieu Gallard, research head at Ipsos France, said that at 1500 GMT, nearly 60% of voters had turned out, up from 39.42% two years earlier. This was the highest comparable turnout since the 1986 legislative vote. It wasn’t clear when the official number of people who voted would be changed.

World News

Pakistan Seeks US Support for Counter-Terrorism Operation Azm-e-Istehkam

(CTN News) – Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Masood Khan, has urged Washington to provide Pakistan with sophisticated small arms and communication equipment to ensure the success of Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, a newly approved counter-terrorism initiative in the country.

The federal government recently approved the reinvigorated national counter-terrorism drive, which comprises three components: doctrinal, societal, and operational.

Ambassador Khan noted that work on the first two phases has already begun, with the third phase set to be implemented soon.

Addressing US policymakers, scholars, and corporate leaders at the Wilson Center in Washington, Khan emphasized the importance of strong security links, enhanced intelligence cooperation, and the resumption of sales of advanced military platforms between Pakistan and the US.

He argued that this is crucial for regional security and countering the rising tide of terrorism, which also threatens the interests of the US and its allies.

“Pakistan has launched Azm-i-Istehkam […] to oppose and dismantle terrorist networks. For that, we need sophisticated small arms and communication equipment,” said Ambassador Khan.

Pakistan–United States relations

The ambassador observed that the prospects of Pakistan-United States relations were bright, stating that the two countries “share values, our security and economic interests are interwoven, and it is the aspiration of our two peoples that strengthens our ties.”

He invited US investors and businesses to explore Pakistan’s potential in terms of demographic dividend, technological advancements, and market opportunities.

Khan also suggested that the US should consider Pakistan as a partner in its diplomatic efforts in Kabul and collaborate on counterterrorism and the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

He stressed that the bilateral relationship should be based on ground realities and not be hindered by a few issues.

“We should not base our engagement on the incongruity of expectations.

Our ties should be anchored in ground realities, even as we aim for stronger security and economic partnerships. Secondly, one or two issues should not hold the entire relationship hostage,” said the ambassador.

World News

China Urges Taiwanese to Visit Mainland ‘Without Worry’ Despite Execution Threat

China Urges Taiwanese to Visit Mainland Without Worry Despite Threats

China has reassured Taiwanese citizens that they can visit the mainland “without the slightest worry”, despite Taiwan raising its travel alert to the second-highest level in response to Beijing’s new judicial guidelines targeting supporters of Taiwanese independence.

Last week, China published guidelines that could impose the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving “diehard” advocates of Taiwanese independence.

In response, Taiwan’s government urged the public to avoid “unnecessary travel” to mainland China and Hong Kong, and raised its travel warning to the “orange” level.

However, Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for a Chinese body overseeing Taiwan affairs, stated that the new directives are “aimed solely at the very small number of supporters of ‘Taiwan independence’, who are engaged in malicious acts and utterances”.

She emphasized that “the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots involved in cross-strait exchanges and cooperation do not need to have the slightest worry when they come to or leave mainland China”.

“They can arrive in high spirits and leave fully satisfied with their stay,” Zhu added.

What’s Behind The China-Taiwan Tensions?

The tensions stem from the longstanding dispute over Taiwan’s status. Mainland China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to bring the democratic island under its control, while Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

Beijing has not conducted top-level communications with Taipei since 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen became Taiwan’s leader. China has since branded her successor, President Lai Ching-te, a “dangerous separatist”.

“The DPP authorities have fabricated excuses to deceive the people on the island and incite confrontation and opposition,” Zhu said in her statement.
Despite the political tensions, many Taiwanese continue to travel to mainland China for work, study, or business.