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they amount to more than the rest of the developed world put together — although admittedly they are still lower by one measure: America still emits more per head of population. However, that ceased to be true of Britain in 2014 — and by 2018 China was well ahead, with 6.84tonnes of CO2 emitted per capita, against 5.3 tonnes in Britain.

To appreciate how fast China’s economy and emissions have grown, consider that in 1990 we emitted 9.6 tonnes per head and China just 1.84 tonnes. Since 2018, our emissions have continued to fall while China’s have increased. In total, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says, they have risen in China by 365 per cent since 1990. In the same period, Britain’s fell by 35 per cent.

T wO further indicators reveal how great the impact of cheap energy has been on China’s economy — and give the lie to the claim they are still a ‘developing country’ which deserves to be indulged. First, carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere a long time, taking up to 200 years to be absorbed by the oceans. This means the emissions a country generates accumulate over time. The quantity of accumulated emissions reveals the degree to which China already dominates world manufacturing.

From 1990 to 2019, China’s accumulated emissions amounted to 167 billion tonnes of CO2. Britain’s were just 14 billion tonnes.

The second point is that the IEA, which produces this data, relies on figures supplied by the Chinese government — and many claim they are unreliable.

In 2019, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post — then still a newspaper that could publish material critical of the Communist regime — reported that the Chinese environment ministry was ‘frequently presented with fake data and fabricated documents’, citing dozens of cases of fraud. ‘The party committee of Bozhou district in Zunyi, southern

China, was found to have fabricated notes for ten meetings — part of the work requirement under the new environmental targets — in a bid to cheat the inspectors,’ the paper said.

which explains why some sources, including Carbon Brief (a green news service) and the Rhodium Group (a New York think-tank), say China’s emissions are far higher than those cited by the IEA.

It is true that China is building wind and solar renewables. But their share of China’s energy mix remains negligible (see graph on previous page), while its coal, gas and oil use expand inexorably.

There are those who say that, despite all this, we should trust China — and Xi’s promise that its emissions will start to fall and eventually reach Net Zero.

Former U.S. vice president and green campaigner Al Gore is an enthusiastic advocate: ‘I think they will overachieve that goal,’ he gushed earlier this year. ‘They put out goals only when they are absolutely certain they can reach them, and they often overachieve.’

O THERS are more doubtful, none more so than Lord Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. Speaking to the Mail this week, he recalled how he used to voice scepticism about China in the Nineties, only to be told by diplomat Sir Percy Cradock, a prominent apologist for the country: ‘They may be thuggish dictators but they are men of their word.’

On the contrary, he said this week, ‘they are thuggish dictators but they are NOT men of their word’.

China, he added, has flagrantly breached the Hong Kong handover treaty, which guaranteed basic freedoms for at least 50 years. It has broken its pledges over trade.

And most recently, in the Covid pandemic, it broke the promises it made after the 2002 SARS outbreak to be transparent and notify the world Health Organisation within 24 hours if it discovered a new deadly disease.

‘The idea that you can believe what they say about environmental targets is for the birds,’ Lord Patten said. ‘Again and again, they rat on what they promise. Yet we are told we must be nice to them or they won’t keep their word.

‘I’m sure there are groups in China that want to see a reduction in emissions. That is not the concern of the Communist leadership, which wants to keep on growing, dominate global markets and ensure that Chinese standards of living increase.’

Former Chancellor Lord Lawson, founder of the Global warming

Policy Forum, warned that Boris Johnson cannot afford to be naive. ‘If China doesn’t sign up to immediate cuts in its emissions, instead of continuing to expand the use of the coal on which its industrial stranglehold depends, Cop26 is going to be a stage in an unfolding catastrophe.

‘The soaring price of energy in Britain is already wreaking havoc and it is set to get much worse, leading to bankruptcies, inflation and unemployment. Yet China is getting away with voicing green intentions while its actions demonstrate the reverse.

‘Britain’s acts of self-harm will not help save the planet but merely outsource more jobs to a country wallowing in cheap, coal-fired power. If we want China to realise Xi Jinping’s stated goal of becoming the world’s only superpower by 2049, this is a great way to do it.’

Sir Iain Duncan Smith agreed: ‘we are heading for a great historical disaster. The free world is emasculating itself while China gets stronger and more dominant. They will soon be impossible to resist.’