Clinton Paints China Policy With a Green Hue
Feb 22, 2009 – Mark Landler, writing in The New York Times, remarks on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visit to China. Declaring that “we hope you won’t make the same mistakes we made,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton invited China to join the United States in an ambitious effort to curb greenhouse gases, as she toured an energy-efficient power plant in Beijing on Saturday.
“When we were industrializing and growing, we didn’t know any better; neither did Europe,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Now we’re smart enough to figure out how to have the right kind of growth.”
The gas-fired power plant, which uses sophisticated turbines made by General Electric [NYSE; GE], is nearly twice as efficient as the coal-fired plants that supply much of China’s electricity and that helped vault China past the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide.
The Obama administration hopes to make climate change the centerpiece of a broader, more vigorous engagement with China. For Mrs. Clinton, the 2-day stop in Beijing at the end of a weeklong Asian tour, represents an effort to put her own stamp on a relationship that was dominated by the Treasury Department in the latter years of the Bush administration.