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China’s Two-Level Game in the Climate Change Negotiation
Why is China more concerned about ‘climate change’ when developed nations are moving backward in negotiation? Where does China stand in the climate change negotiation? Climate change as one of the crucial issues has hit developing countries such as China, where the focus is on the environmental dilemma – carbon technology to be used for further development or to compromise with the protocol called by the climate change regime. Beijing was listed as one of the most polluted cities in 2015 due to its smog blanket. China cannot escape from its day-to-day climate change issues. However, China came up with the innovative idea at the Paris Climate talks in November 2015 for the commitment of cutting power sector emissions to 60 per cent by 2020. China says it will cut CO2 emissions from coal power by 180 tons by 2020. Moreover, leaders like Le Keqiang say that the policies of state have to change from ‘war on terror’ to the ‘war on pollution’. Theoretically, neoclassical realism explains that states are still dominant according to their domestic capabilities in the international system. Robert Putnam’s two-level game explains that at the national level domestic groups pursue their interest by pressuring the government to adopt favourable policies, and politicians seek power by constructing coalitions among groups. At the international level, a national government seeks to maximise its own ability to satisfy domestic pressure while minimising the adverse consequences of foreign development. In the case of China, the domestic game is a ‘ratification game’, where the contributions do not exceed those in a benchmark without domestic constraints. Thus, the chapter uses the process of a tracing method by tracing the links between possible causes and observing outcomes focusing on sequential processes.