Transcript | Guest Host Iza Ding with Deborah Seligsohn: Inside COP30 in Belem, Brazil, and China's Climate Leadership

This week on Sinica, I’m delighted to have Iza Ding as guest host. Iza is associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and a good friend whose work on Chinese governance I greatly admire. She’s joined by Deborah Seligsohn, who has been a favorite guest on this show many times. Deb is an associate professor of political science at Villanova University and previously served as the science and environmental counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was recorded in three parts: the first two in Belém, Brazil, during COP30 (the 30th UN Climate Change Conference), and the final segment after the conference concluded. Iza and Deb discuss China’s role at the climate summit, the real story behind the famous 2007 U.S. Embassy air quality monitor in Beijing (spoiler: it wasn’t China’s “Silent Spring moment”), Brazil’s management of the conference, why China leads on technology but not on negotiation, and what the outcomes of COP30 mean for the future of global climate cooperation. This is an insider’s view of how climate diplomacy actually works, complete with unexpected fire evacuations and glut-shaming of The New York Times.

3:43 – Deb’s impressions of COP30 and Brazil’s inclusive approach

9:21 – China’s presence at COP30: technology leadership without negotiation leadership

15:34 – Xie Zhenhua’s absence and the U.S.-China dynamic at previous COPs

24:46 – Inside the negotiation rooms: language, politeness, and obstruction

33:06 – BYD’s presence in Brazil and Chinese EV expansion 40:54 – The real story of the 2007 U.S. Embassy air quality monitor in Beijing

45:00 – Fire evacuation at COP30 and UN territorial sovereignty

1:22:06 – What actually drove China’s air pollution control: the 2003 power plant standards

1:41:27 – The dramatic final plenary and the Mutirão decision

1:55:17 – China’s NDC 3.0: under-promise and over-deliver strategy

Transcript:

Iza Ding: Hi, listeners. Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that will help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join Sinica each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China.

I am not Kaiser Kuo on helium. I’m Iza Ding — this week’s guest host. I’m here with our guest today and my dear friend, Dr. Deborah Seligsohn, who has been on this show many, many times and is one of Kaiser’s favorite guests. Dr. Seligsohn is an associate professor of political science at Villanova University, and was previously a science and environmental counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

If you subscribe to my Substack at izading.substack.com or the Sinica Substack, you might have met her through my essay from this past summer called Schopenhauer’s East Asian Renaissance. What you’re about to hear is an episode that has three parts. The first two were recorded this November in Belém, Brazil, where both Deb and I were attending COP30, which is the 30th meeting of the conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In this part, Deb shares with me her thoughts about this year’s climate summit and China’s role in it. You will also hear our discussion of a historical moment in China’s environmental governance, which was in 2007, when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing installed an air pollution monitor on its roof and tweeted out air pollution data. The standard story is that this became China’s silent spring moment, and finally made the Chinese government take care of its air pollution problem. Well, it turned out that this was not the story, and we know it’s not the story because Deb was actually the one that made the embassy do that. So, she told me what actually happened here. The last part of this episode was done after the conclusion of COP30.

Deb and I discussed the collective decision that came out of the summit and talked more about China’s leadership, or lack thereof, in the global effort to fight climate change. Before we start, let me tell you that Sinica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Sinica podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what Kaiser does, please consider lending your support. You can reach him at sinicapod@gmail.com. You can also support Kaiser’s work by becoming a paid subscriber at sinicapodcast.com. You’ll enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from Kaiser, and from some of your favorite China focused writers and commentators. I subscribe to it. I find it very helpful to my own thinking, so do consider doing that.

Now, let me take you to Belém, Brazil, in a cafeteria, at this year’s climate summit. So, Deb, this is your fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth…?

Deborah Seligsohn: Eighth COP.

Iza: Eighth COP. And what are your impressions so far?

Deborah: It’s a really interesting COP. I mean, the Brazilians have really tried to bring in the community. There’s a lot more interaction between local people and people participating at the COP than we’ve seen in recent years. The conference is divided between the blue zone, which is where you need a badge to get in. And it’s very hard for observers because everybody wants to go, so we get a quota. And the green zone, which is open to the public. But in the last few years, the green zone has been virtually empty. This year, the green zone is connected to the blue zone. There’s a lot of interaction back and forth. The green zone is full of local people looking at exhibits on renewable energy, low-carbon options, clean transportation, clean cooking fuels, etc. There’s crafts.

There’s all kinds of things going on. There’s People’s COP downtown. There’s just a lot more happening. The Brazilian presidency is also trying to allow these different voices to be heard within the negotiations process, which has definitely not been true in recent years, and trying to push the COP to get its business done on time, which, also, I’m not sure has ever been done, certainly not in the many years I’ve been going to COPs. Well, I’ve been to eight. The first one I went to was all the way back in 2007.

Iza: Can you say a bit more about how Belém as a city or Brazil did this year compared to previous COPs? Because The Daily Podcast by The New York Times did an episode on the COP in China, and one of the things they said, or implied ,was that is kind of a mess and the traffic is bad, the roof is leaking. But honestly, I thought it was quite well run. I have frustrations about the lack of communication from the presidency in the past two days, but, overall, I thought Belém did a great job. And the roof leaks, you know, the roof leaks in my Pittsburgh house when it rains, so I don’t see the point of making a big deal out of the roof of a temporary structure leaking a little bit during a heavy storm.

And while the streets are not empty because there’s a huge convention taking place, I thought the traffic around the convention center is a lot better than going into the city from the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. So, as a seasoned COP attender, can you just compare Belém a bit with, for instance, Copenhagen, Paris, Azerbaijan?

Deborah: So, you’re right, these are the kinds of problems that you hit anywhere when you try to run a conference for a hundred thousand people. It’s really a huge logistics challenge. And I will say last summer, many people were telling me — oh, the organizational problems are insurmountable. And it seems like Brazil has basically surmounted almost all of them. I expected the conference venue to be hot because we’re in the tropics. It was hot in Bali in 2007 as well. The roof leaks — I felt some drops of rain during incredible storms. I didn’t see rain pouring in or anything. So, I would say they’ve done an awfully good job on logistics. And I think the reality is, with a conference this size, you are going to need temporary structures.

Last year, there were sort of fumes from paint and solvents for the entire time, which I think was much more difficult to manage than a slightly warm and maybe slightly damp venue. I think the presidency has done an incredibly good job of managing the agenda. So, COP is actually the big meeting, but they’re really usually 3 or 4 during the year where the countries get together. And at the big pre-meeting in June in Bonn, it took them two days to come up with an agenda. I think this time it was about 15 minutes, which is a sign of just incredible parliamentary and bureaucratic skill on the part of the COP president. So, I was impressed in the way I was at Paris in 2015 at the management of the negotiations. A place like Paris, which is highly developed and happened to have an old airport to turn into a huge convention center, gave it a lot of advantages.

But most places don’t have that, and they’re trying to move the COP from place to place. So, overall, I would give this COP very high mark.

Iza: So, let’s talk about China at the COP because the Daily podcast did say a lot about China at the COP. And I have to say, personally, it’s a bit weird to be in a space where you don’t see a big presence of the United States, and nobody seems to care, while it’s also a bit weird to be in this space where China is not a complete villain. We’ve been hanging out around the China Pavilion a lot, partly because it’s so centrally located. So, tell us the event you did at the China Pavilion this morning.

Deborah: So, we had an event hosted by a Global Coalition Of Universities that is spearheaded by Tsinghua University, the Chinese equivalent of MIT. And they held an event on academic cooperation, basically. And I gave a talk in which I outlined the