https://english.news.cn/20231211/abfb78276f70461cb0456e19496e1803/c.html
Following the rolling out of new climate change issues with the UN which promotes cleaner energy, China claims to be making efforts to transition their energy sources as well. Following the CO28 meeting which is supposed to be an extremely difficult meeting that cracks down on climate change and tries to get to the root issue. With China going to this meeting they left trying to create similar climate rules as the Paris Treaty, these include shifting energy to cleaner and less damaging to the climate method. China also claimed to prevent small new developing countries from turning to unclean forms of energy. I think that it is interesting that China is choosing to make such a huge change now while they are quickly becoming a world power and influence. Because according to what the Chinese representative said, the conversion to clean energy will be a slow process. Which I just interpreted as a process that will cost lots of money and may strain the economy. What I wonder is if China wants to try to warm relations with Europe so they are trying to match Europe with their efforts to fight climate change so that will become one less thing the different countries can but head against. I think this relates to class because recently we have been talking about global and regional powers. One thing that stuck out to me in the video was how China claimed they would help developing countries use cleaner energy sources. To me, that is a clear example of how China is a regional power that gets to exert its will on other countries that do not have the manpower or resources to adequately fight back. I also think part of what makes regional powers regional powers is the influence they can garner because of the power they have over the rest of the region. In this case, China can spread its influence while gaining the trust and support of smaller countries through their source of power and those small countries can quickly become bandwagon states. Either way, I think it will be important to see how much reform China does for clean energy and the influence and support they mainly gain from other countries.