When the numbers don’t work to our advantage, what’s better than changing the way we calculate them? This is the mess that the Chinese authorities got into when declaring their carbon emissions: they would have revised their calculation method to better achieve the set objectives.
According to the Financial Times, Beijing now appears to calculate carbon intensity, which measures the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of economic production, including emissions from industrial processes, but excluding non-energy uses of fossil fuels. A rather practical calculation, because it miraculously erases half of the increase in emissions observed over the last five years.
A gigantic gap: it corresponds to annual emissions equivalent to those of industrial economies like Germany and South Korea. If the new definition has not been made public, the results of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) indicate that the country would have reduced its carbon intensity by 17.7%, just a few units short of the objective set at 18% for the period 2020-2025.
Big polluters, big liars
This was without counting on analysts from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). Based on traditional calculations, combining estimates of emissions linked to fossil fuels with official GDP growth data, the latter showed that China’s carbon intensity would have instead decreased by 12.4% over the period. The numbers are not good, Xi Jinping.
This unmasked subterfuge, which hides an increase in the use of coal, undermines Beijing’s claims to climate leadership, long reinforced by the spectacular growth of renewable energies and the electrification of its transport system. It also undermines the credibility of multiple promises by President Xi Jinping.
The latter had in fact promised to reduce carbon intensity by 65% compared to 2005 levels by 2030 in China. If he changes the calculations again, it is a safe bet that Xi Jinping will get closer to this figure. But the reality will be quite different. Enough to also compromise carbon neutrality by 2060, Beijing’s other major objective.
This revision is also part of a broader phenomenon: that of the increasing opacity of official Chinese statistics. The Financial Times lists some examples of data manipulated, or simply suppressed by the CCP: deletion of a series of prices used by economists to adjust inflation, stopping the publication of data on land purchases by real estate developers, suspension of statistics on youth unemployment, etc. So many signs that China is surely doing worse than Xi Jinping would have hoped.
