By Martin Banks - 9th April 2009
China stands ready to conduct even closer cooperation with the EU
Song Zhe
China's ambassador to the EU has insisted that his country "supports and plays an active part" in international cooperation on climate change.
Song Zhe also says that recent agreements have taken EU-China cooperation to a "new stage".
His comments come amid continuing criticism of China – now the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world – over its efforts to tackle global warming.
It also comes ahead of next week's EU-China inter-parliamentary meeting in parliament.
He says China takes the issue of climate change seriously and is "working energetically" to tackle the problem.
"China has established a leading group on tackling climate change and introduced a series of laws and regulations," he adds.
"It has raised the target of a 20 per cent in energy consumption per unit of GDP and a 10 per cent cut in emission of key pollutants."
"China is energetically developing clean energy to avoid repeating the old path in the west which has been to pollute first, treat afterwards."
He says, "China and the EU enjoy long-standing cooperation on climate change and China stands ready to conduct even closer cooperation with the EU."
China argues that wealthy nations should contribute more because they have a greater historic responsibility for the carbon that has entered the atmosphere over the past 200 years.
Climate change will be one of the topics coming under the spotlight at next month's EU-China summit in Prague.
The summit should be been held in December but was cancelled by Beijing in the fall-out of the row over parliament's decision to invite the Dalai Lama to address MEPS.
Several high-ranking Chinese officials will be in parliament for the IPM on 15-16 April.
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