How China has gone from climate villain to hero in just six years

It’s an ironic turn of events. On Monday at 11pm, Beijing issued its first ever “red alert” – a warning for all to stay indoors, strap on their masks and protect themselves from the deadly air. The city was essentially under “shutdown” – schools closed, with construction and other industries on pause.

Meanwhile, world leaders are in Paris at the UN Climate Change Conference, trying to reach a global agreement and curb problems just like this. And just who is the world expecting to take the lead? China.

In 2009, during the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, China was characterised as the “villain”. Ask anyone whether the world’s second-largest economy would ever lead the fight against global warming and it would have seemed unfathomable. “We’re a developing nation,” they would argue, offsetting any responsibility to cooperate. Amid tit-for-tat squabbling with the United States, China refused to sign any binding deals. An ambitious global reduction target and crucial figures providing a framework for a drop in emissions were also watered down in the last hours of the talks, at China’s behest. Instead of a breakthrough, what the world witnessed was a breakdown of multilateralism.