China rejects UK claims it 'hijacked' climate talks

China dismissed yesterday a British editorial accusing it of "hijacking" the UN-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen as baseless and politically motivated.
British climate change minister Edward Miliband's editorial singled out Beijing as the culprit behind the talks' near collapse.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the piece seemed designed to sow discord among developing nations.
She said the comments by an individual British politician not mentioning Miliband by name were an attempt to "shirk the obligations of developed countries to their developing counterparts and foment discord among developing countries, but the attempt was doomed to fail."
At a news conference later, Jiang added that developed countries are "absolutely unqualified to censure developing countries" on climate change since many of them have not honoured existing commitments to curb global warming. She didn't specify any countries or say how they fell short.
"China has made arduous efforts," she said. "In terms of attitude and effectiveness of our actions, our measures are on par with any other country."
China has said it will cut "carbon intensity," a measure of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of production, by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with levels in 2005.
Miliband wrote in The Guardian newspaper Sunday that most countries developed and developing supported binding cuts in emissions, but that "some leading developing countries currently refuse to countenance this."