China | COP26 Chinese President Xi Jinping faces criticism for skipping COP26 global climate summit
Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping has been facing criticism from across the globe for not attending COP26 — a global summit on climate change convened by the United Nations Organization (UNO) in Glasgow weeks ago — despite being a country that has one-quarter of the carbon emissions of the world.
A Canada-based think tank said, quoting experts, that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change.
Jinping's absence in the COP26 climate summit has led to all-round disappointment, and it is believed that it is hard to arrest climate change when the biggest culprit polluting the environment does not show up, Asian News International (ANI) reported quoting International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS).
Criticizing Jinping's absence in COP26, the US President Joe Biden, who led from the front a the global climate summit, said it was a "big mistake" that his Chinese counterpart had chosen not to attend the summit, when more than 120 world leaders had spent two days discussing how to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C from the pre-industrial level.
Former US President Barack Obama had also criticised China and Russia for their absence in the Glasgow climate meet.
According to a report by the US embassy in Georgia, the noxious air pollution threatens not only the people of China but also global health and the economy of the world.
"Too much of the Chinese Communist Party's economy is built on wilful disregard for air, land and water quality," former US Secretary of State Michael R Pompeo quoted as saying by ANI.
