Merkel presses China on climate change

BEIJING, Aug 27 (Reuters) German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged China today to do more to halt climate change, prompting the response that the developed West has been polluting the skies for much longer than the newly developing Chinese.

Merkel is on her second visit to China as Chancellor and the trip comes four months before world environment ministers meet in Bali to try to launch new talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

She pressed for stronger protection of intellectual property rights and said the ground rules for gathering resources should be the same worldwide, an apparent criticism of China's relations with Sudan.

China has sizeable economic interests in Sudan and has been under pressure to take a more critical approach to Khartoum after accusations aid from Beijing feeds violence in Darfur.

Wen said China would do everything it could to fight product piracy but that there were differences concerning climate change.

''The Chinese wish, like all people, for blue skies, green hills and clear water,'' he told a joint news conference.

He said the task of reducing emissions was tougher in China than in Germany because it had more people had not yet reached economic growth of industrialised countries in terms of GDP per capita.

''China has taken part of the responsibility for climate change for only 30 years while industrial countries have grown fast for the last 200 years,'' he said.

Merkel will meet President Hu Jintao later today and heads to Japan on Wednesday where she will also address climate change and economic issues.

At a June summit chaired by Merkel, G8 leaders agreed to pursue substantial, if unspecified cuts, in greenhouse gases and work with the UN on a new deal to fight global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges 35 rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but developing nations including China have no targets.

China will overtake the United States by 2008 as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

China is overtaking the United States as the world's second-biggest exporter and steadily catching up with Germany, the world's biggest.

REUTERS RN BD1148