Ahead of the G-8 Summit, China expressed concern on Monday over attempts by developed nations to 'inhibit' the industrialisation of developing countries citing climate change and stressing that the price of such a move would be far greater than doing nothing to fight climate change.
"The international community should respect the rights of the developing countries and allow them enough space for development. The consequences of inhibiting their development would be far greater than not doing anything to fight climate change," China's top planner Ma Kai told reporters in Beijing.
Ma, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said it was not fair to use climate change as an excuse to ask developing countries undertake quantified emissions reduction commitments as to developed countries
and to ask them to do so too early, too abrupt and too bluntly.
"This would hinder the development of developing countries and hamper their efforts to achieve industrialisation and modernisation," he said while releasing the first National Action Plan on Climate Change, the first by a developing nation.
Developed countries, who have already achieved industrialisation now have the means and must shoulder the obligations to provide financial and technical support to developing countries as they fight climate change, he said.
"Developed countries, in their course of industrialisation, have emitted unlimited quantities of green house gases, mainly carbon dioxide," he said as Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to attend the Outreach Session of the G-8 Summit in Germany this week where climate change is the prime focus.