Meeting with the Dalai Lama may have been more problematic than first thought as China pull out of climate meeting in Greenland

China has declined to take part in an informal climate meeting in Greenland next week due to the prime minister’s decision to meet with the Dalai Lama, according to several experts in Chinese politics.

Both PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller met with the exiled Tibetan leader last month, despite protests from the Chinese government.

Next week’s meeting in Greenland has been organised by Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard as a precursor to the UN Climate Change Conference due to take place in Copenhagen this December.

Hedegaard believed that China’s participation in the Greenland meeting could have been an important step towards laying the foundations for the country’s agreement to considerable greenhouse gas reductions at the December summit.

But on 29 May the Chinese government indicated that Rasmussen and Møller’s meeting with the Dalai Lama had ‘destroyed the friendly and co-operative atmosphere between China and Denmark’. Experts now say China’s refusal to go to Greenland is the first repercussion from that meeting.

‘It isn’t costing the Chinese anything to not attend the Greenland meeting because they’ll just continue their bilateral negotiations with the US and the UN,’ Verner Worm, professor at Copenhagen Business School’s Asia Research Center, told Berlingske Tidende newspaper.‘But for Denmark, as host of the UN climate conference, it’s a heavy blow.’

Clemens Stubbe Østergaard, China expert at Aarhus University, agreed.

‘It’s nerve-racking for us as the host that our relationship with the Chinese has been damaged so close to the conference,’ he said. ‘But they take the climate issue very seriously, so I don’t think this means they won’t fight for a good agreement in Copenhagen.’

Neither Hedegaard nor Rasmussen have commented on China’s declining to take part in the Greenland meeting.