A senior Chinese diplomat said on Friday that the current Copenhagen Conference "is an important meeting on climate change," and "the Chinese government hopes to see positive results from the conference."

Liu Zhenmin, the Chinese deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, told a group of UN-based Chinese and foreign reporters at the Chinese Mission that "the ongoing Copenhagen Conference is an important meeting on climate change. The international community is full of expectations."

"The Chinese government also hopes to see positive results from the conference," he said. "We have officially announced that Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the conference."

The UN Climate Change Conference, also the 5th signatories' meeting of the Kyoto Protocol, is officially known as the 15th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which runs from Dec. 7 through 18 in Copenhagen, the Danish capital.

"We think the objective of the Copenhagen Conference is to achieve positive results in terms of further enhancing the comprehensive, effective and sustained implementation of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol," Liu said. "The outcome should cover clear and concrete arrangement in mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer and financial support."

"We believe the key to the success in Copenhagen is to stick to the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, adhere to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and the mandate of the Bali Roadmap," he said.

Liu, who attended the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on behalf of the Chinese government, said: "During the previous negotiations, a great deal of important consensus has been reached, including that developed countries should continue to shoulder the duty of adopting mid-term, quantified goals for large-scale emission cut; developing countries should, according to their specific national conditions and with the support of the developed countries in capital and technological transfer, try their best to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and strive to adapt to climate change; an effective funding mechanism should be established and an effective mechanism should be installed to promote transfer of technologies."

"The international community should lock on these consensus and progress and work to reach further agreement," he said.

"China attaches great important to addressing climate change," he said. "Chinese President Hu Jintao attended the UN Climate Change Summit last September and expressed China's strong commitment on climate change."

In order to make more contributions to the success of the Copenhagen Conference, the Chinese government recently made four important decisions on climate change, which include:

-- to cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level;

-- to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020;

-- to increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares by 2020 from the 2005 level;

-- to increase forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 level.

"These are important decisions. For China, as a big developing country, it is not easy to make such commitment," Liu said. "They also show how serious we are on climate change as well as on Copenhagen Conference."

(Xinhua News Agency December 12, 2009)