{"id":459414,"date":"2025-09-29T03:23:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459414\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:23:20","slug":"china-offers-unlikely-glimmer-of-hope-in-fight-against-plastic-pollution-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459414\/","title":{"rendered":"China offers unlikely glimmer of hope in fight against plastic pollution \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chinese wild card<\/p>\n

Countries in the self-named High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution<\/a> \u2014 which backs a “comprehensive” approach addressing the full lifecycle of plastic \u2014 have long targeted China as a powerful potential ally. They face strong resistance from major oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran \u2014\u00a0and, most recently, the U.S.<\/a> under the Trump administration’s “drill, baby, drill” ethos (oil is the main raw material from which plastic is made).<\/p>\n

While China is the world’s top consumer and producer of plastic, the country has also ushered in several restrictions on the production, sale and consumption of single-use plastics in a bid to stem a national pollution crisis. This has made it more aligned with high-ambition countries than some other major plastic producers.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Asian superpower and world’s biggest plastic producer subtly changed its language on tackling the plastic crisis. | Adek Berry\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Observers also see the country looking to expand its global influence via the U.N. \u2014 especially in the wake of the U.S. retreat from multilateralism. “We should firmly safeguard the status and authority of the U.N., and ensure its irreplaceable, key role in global governance,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech<\/a> at a meeting of Asian leaders near Beijing on Sept. 1, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.<\/p>\n

“My sense is that, of course, they’re also seeing that space opening, generally around environment,” said David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law. “And the U.S. retreating creates a vacuum that China will probably want to fill in their own way.”<\/p>\n

That could work out well for high-ambition countries. China is an “important partner for the EU” in the talks, European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told POLITICO during the Geneva negotiations.<\/p>\n

“Our strategy since Busan has always been to break China away from Saudi [Arabia] and the U.S.,” said one negotiator from a country within the High Ambition Coalition, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chinese wild card Countries in the self-named High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution \u2014 which backs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[2740,10684,1395,32,5398,728,730,774,105060,2661,54160,10687,856,10688,332,70,413,1201,16,15,49,12339,1773],"class_list":{"0":"post-459414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-chemicals","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-emissions","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-india","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-jessika-roswall","17":"tag-oil","18":"tag-pesticides","19":"tag-plastics","20":"tag-pollution","21":"tag-recycling","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-science","24":"tag-space","25":"tag-trade","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-waste","30":"tag-xi-jinping"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115285446321743941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}