China is willing to make its voluntary carbon emissions target part of a binding United Nations resolution, a concession which may pressure developed countries to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a senior negotiator said Tuesday.

UN climate talks in Mexico's Cancun beach resort hinge on agreement to cement national emissions targets after 2012 when the current round of Kyoto carbon caps end.

China's compromise would depend on the United States agreeing to binding emissions cuts and an extension of Kyoto, which binds the emissions of nearly 40 developed countries except the US, which didn't ratify it.

Developing nations want to continue the protocol while industrialized backers, including Japan, Russia and Canada, want a separate agreement regulating all nations.

China has previously rejected making its domestic emissions goals binding, as they are for industrialized nations now.

"We can create a resolution and that resolution can be binding on China," said Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's envoy for climate change talks. "Under the (UN Climate) Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision. We can discuss the specific form.

"We can make our efforts a part of international efforts. Our view is that to address these concerns, there's no need to overturn the Kyoto Protocol and start all over again," Huang said.

The proposal was a "game changer," Jennifer Morgan at the Washington-based World Resources Institute told Reuters. "This is a very constructive and useful statement by China and points to a way forward for an agreement in Cancun."

"The devil is in the details but this is a promising development," said Alden Meyer of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

China's chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said its targets could be brought under the Convention.

"Developing countries can voluntarily use their own national resources to make their own voluntary emissions commitments, and these commitments should be under the Convention," Xie said.

Huang said China would not shift from demanding that new emissions targets are contained within an extended Kyoto.

China has insisted its efforts were binding only domestically and could not be brought into any international deal.

"In the past, China may have said that there'd be no linking and we will act voluntarily without attaching any conditions, but now after all this is an international effort and can be fully part of that. This is a kind of compromise," Huang said. "We're willing to compromise, we're willing to play a positive and constructive role, but on this issue (Kyoto) there's no room for compromise."

(Shanghai Daily December 8, 2010)