PARIS: China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang made a long-awaited pledge to curb carbon emissions during a trip to France on Tuesday where he also signed trade deals worth billions of euros.

“China’s carbon dioxide emission will peak by around 2030 and China will work hard to achieve the target at an even earlier date,” Li’s office said in a statement as he lunched with President Francois Hollande on the first of a three-day visit.

France was chosen for the announcement because it is hosting UN climate talks at the end of the year tasked with producing a global pact on curbing climate change.

The statement by China said carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will drop 60-65 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030, and the share of non-fossil fuel in primary energy consumption will grow to about 20 per cent.

Hollande’s office welcomed the announcement as a sign of China’s “support and confidence in the COP21” climate conference.

Paris hopes the positive contribution from the world’s biggest polluter will boost the negotiations, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said were moving at a “snail’s pace”.

France is rolling out the red carpet for Li, who is set to sign 53 trade deals during the visit.

Among the first was an $18 billion (16.1 billion euro) deal for Airbus to sell 75 A330 planes to a Chinese company.

His trip comes six months after French Prime Minister Manuel Valls travelled to Beijing and called for more French products to be exported to China to “rebalance” trade between the two countries.

France, which is struggling with weak growth and record unemployment, imports two and a half times as much from China as flows in the opposite direction.

In 2013, Paris ran a 26 billion euro ($29 billion) deficit with the Asian giant.

53 deals on the table

Other French companies lining up deals with China are energy group Alstom, container shipping company CMA-CGM and electricity giant Engie.

The two nations are also expected to sign an agreement on joint infrastructure projects to be carried out in Asian and African countries.

China, which has too many factories and is struggling with a slowdown in domestic demand, is pushing its companies to seek new markets abroad and could take advantage of French experience in these markets.

French authorities will raise prickly human rights issues with their guest, by expressing “concerns” over new legislation being drawn up in Beijing such as a law governing NGOs, an anti-terrorist law and a law on national security, said a diplomatic source.

On Wednesday Li will head to the southern city of Marseille where he will be met by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who has visited China several times in the past year.

Li will wrap up his tour of France in the southern city of Toulouse where he and Valls will attend a France-China seminar attended by hundreds of Chinese enterprises. Li will also visit the Airbus headquarters in the city.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2015

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