Framing It Right: China–EU Relations and Patterns of Interaction on Climate Change

Abstract

In the field of Climate Change China has been an increasingly important member of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and since the mid-2000s, a key target of European engagement policies in the broader framework of the "EU–China strategic partnership". But how do Chinese decision-makers perceive these efforts? The way or "frame" they use to look at climate change also determines their mutual perceptions of each other's efforts on climate change. In order to better understand and evaluate how Chinese climate elites see the EU, the article first details the nascent theoretical debate on diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing and critically assesses the Chinese discourse on climate change. As an empirical, qualitative study, the article draws on interviews carried out in Beijing, Bonn, and Warsaw in 2012 and 2013. The article's main argument is that the Chinese frame toward the issue of climate change has been converging toward the European frame in the 2000s. During these years increasing energy intensity and environmental pollution raised awareness of climate change effects and vulnerability within the population. The Chinese ascent to the status of the second biggest world economy and increasing engagement in multilateral cooperation has a further effect on its framing of climate change. Located in the discourse post-Copenhagen, it attempts to capture the new global dynamics that have been integral to the subsequent rounds of negotiation and epitomized by the Chinese position during the 2011 COP17 Summit in Durban.