The biggest emitter of planet-warming pollution managed to take almost the whole world by surprise. In a September speech to the United Nations, Chinese President Xi Jinping put a 2060 end date on his country’s contribution to global warming. No other nation can do more to keep warming below the 1.5C threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Yet diplomats, climate activists, and even policy experts inside China for the most part had not anticipated this pivotal turnabout.

Just days before Xi’s UN appearance, in fact, European leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had pressed him directly on a videoconference to follow the EU’s example in setting a climate-neutrality goal. Notes from the call reviewed by Bloomberg Green indicate that Xi gave no hint he was about to abandon China’s long-established policy against climate restrictions on economic growth.

Inside China, meanwhile, experts who specialize in the intricacies of emissions policy were stunned by Xi’s speech. “Can this goal be achieved?” asked a bewildered post on WeChat from a retired climate negotiator in Beijing. Most stakeholders with a hand in previous climate decisions had been kept out of the loop, according to interviews with more than a dozen industry groups, environmentalists, and government researchers in China. But the decision to completely reorient a gigantic economy that’s dominated by coal, at the cost of trillions of dollars, didn’t come from nowhere.

Xie is modest about his role. “We made policy proposals to relevant leaders and departments,” he says in an interview on Tsinghua’s campus in late October, dressed like a typical Communist Party cadre in a dark suit and pressed white shirt. “It seems our proposals had some impact.”

China and other developing nations had long held that wealthier countries who benefited from earlier industrialization, heedless of the dangers from burning fossil fuel, should carry most of the economic burden for preventing catastrophic warming. Xie spent more than a decade as China’s top climate diplomat, in the early years fiercely defending the principle that emerging economies have a right to uncontrolled carbon emissions. On a population-adjusted basis, after all, far too much carbon dioxide began its journey into the atmosphere from smokestacks and tailpipes in the U.S. and Europe.
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Xie Zhenhua addresses the plenary session of the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa on Dec. 11, 2011.
Photographer: Xinhua/ZUMA PRESS

At the 2011 international climate talks in Durban, Xie gave a table-pounding speech calling out the hypocrisy of developed nations; news footage made him famous throughout China. Now at the twilight of his career, he has done more than anyone else outside Xi’s ruling circle to position China as a global climate leader, establishing a carbon neutrality plan ahead of the U.S.

“When you first start, it’s just a job,” Xie says. “But after some time, when you see the impact you could bring to the country, the people, and the world, it is no longer just a job. It has become a cause, a higher calling.”

At 71, Xie should be happily retired after more than three decades shaping China’s approach to the climate and environmental protection. Communist Party custom requires members of Xie’s rank who turn 70 to relinquish official roles. A rare exception allowed him to receive an appointment as special adviser to the environment ministry this year.

In that capacity, Xie submitted the 2060 recommendations based on research his institute had done in coordination with a dozen government-linked think tanks. The proposal likely arrived on Xi’s desk via Vice Premier Han Zheng, who sits on the Politburo’s Standing Committee and oversees the environment ministry.