The more China pursues its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, the more the United States, Japan, India and Australia will do to push back against Beijing’s bullying, a panel of regional security experts said Tuesday. Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said President Xi Jinping “is not putting on his Mr. Nice face” in looking abroad, as he heads into the next party Congress. “These four navies [in the Quad] are very powerful” and when acting together send a message to China that they intend to secure trade routes and, as democracies, uphold the rule of law in international disputes, as in the case of Taiwan, he said. Speaking from Canberra, Susannah Patton, a research fellow at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney, said “the Quad does [thwart Chinese ambitions] just by existing. It’s a positive partnership” that showed its value to the region in the past year by distributing COVID-19 vaccines to control the pandemic. She added later that Australians view the Quad and the Australia, United Kingdom, United States, or AUKUS, agreement as “two completely separate arrangements.” The Quad has a diplomatic role in Canberra’s view, while AUKUS is related to military security.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.