Climate Adaptation the Chinese Way

How China takes Climate Change Seriously

What I keep coming back to is that what is often seen as the 'West' has its power base so intimately tied to fossil fuels that we can confidently expect a future where the climate change 'baddies' live in North America, Europe (including Russia), and Australia. What follows is the translation of an article by Uwe Kerkow previously published in German on 31 March 2025, following on from an earlier article in the South China Morning Post.

We need to note that in China, as in the West, environmental scientists are funded mostly by public money and have their research agenda set by the ruling elites. The South China Morning Post is also owned by Alibaba, the head of which has come to be known as a Chinese Communist Party member. However, this close link also works the other way, indicating that the research carried out reflects real concerns by the elites. And given China’s more recent (post 1980) track record of combating other essential threats like wide-spread poverty, it is likely that we will see an increasing focus on climate adaptation.

It appears that the editors of the German on-line magazine Telepolis got cold feet, fearing that they would be accused of publishing Chinese propaganda. They changed the original title from “Climate Change: China is betting on agriculture in Tibet” to “Desperate plan or megalomania? China wants to plough up Tibet”. The title photo was changed from a wheat field in front of a pagoda and several other buildings to a Buddhist monk praying in front of a mountain scenery. Obviously, a population shift to cooler regions on the Tibetan plateau could very well mean the end of Tibetan culture. Other than the established media outlets, I trust that readers know how to differentiate and do not require ideological hints before reading potentially controversial articles.

Photo by Jiasong Huang on Unsplash

Impending tipping points of climate change are a major concern for Beijing. However, those concerns are by no means just about coal-fired power plants and CO2 emissions.

The leadership in Beijing obviously expects climate change to be unstoppable and to have catastrophic consequences. Alarmed by an accelerating global climate collapse, Chinese government scientists have proposed significantly intensifying agriculture on thTibetan Plateau so that it could serve as a potential refuge.

In a recent report in the Chinese-language journal Climate Change Research, the National Climate Centre in Beijing warned that accelerated climate collapse - including the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, Atlantic ocean currents and polar ice sheets - could massively destabilise global food systems within decades.

As the threat of global climate collapse grows, Beijing is finalising plans to turn the Tibetan Plateau into a granary. As the South China Morning Post writes, the plan is also seen as a sign of Beijing's increasing desperation in the face of looming ecological challenges.

The ‘roof of the world’ as a granary

If several climate tipping elements exceed critical thresholds, this will have ‘profound and far-reaching impacts on the Earth and its inhabitants - from unprecedented sea level rises to extreme weather events that render regions uninhabitable and overwhelm existing adaptive capacities’, the study states.

The response developed by Chinese climate scientists is to rapidly expand high-altitude agriculture on the Tibetan Plateau to enable China to better withstand the impending global catastrophe.

The researchers at China's National Climate Centre are most concerned about the melting of polar ice. Greenland is now losing around 30 million tonnes of ice every hour, while the ice shelves of Antarctica are breaking up bit by bit.

Disruptive consequences of climate change

If the Greenland ice disappears, the sea level will rise by 7.5 metres, and if the Antarctic even thaws, it will rise by a further incredible 58 metres. The effects on the Chinese coasts can be traced to the metre at floodmap.net.

And China also has to cope with increasingly severe weather events: The Indian Ocean Dipole, which influences weather patterns in the Indo-Pacific region, oscillates between extremes, triggering deadly floods in Pakistan and threatening droughts along the Yangtze River.

The NCC's plan implies paradoxical climate shifts: While rising temperatures scorch tropical farmland, Tibet's icy plains are getting wetter and warming twice as fast as the global average. Glacier meltwater is now irrigating valleys where frost once prevailed all year round. The growing season has become over a month (34 days) longer since 1980.

Highland barley and potatoes

However, global warming is running parallel to a revolution in agricultural technology. Scientists have created new, even more cold-tolerant barley varieties that enable harvests at an altitude of 5,000 metres. The idea is obvious because highland barley is traditionally one of the most important crops on the Tibetan plateau.

However, China is also systematically driving forward research into potato cultivation and is achieving yields of over 75 tonnes per hectare on the plateau thanks to excellent sunlight at high altitudes - although only under experimental conditions for the time being.

Such yields are made possible by the use of cold-resistant hybrid varieties and modern agricultural techniques that include optimised soil management, specially adapted greenhouses and precision irrigation.

The average potato yield in China in 2022 was just over 20 tonnes per hectare. In comparison, Germany achieves between 19 and just under 46.3 tonnes per hectare, with an average of 40 tonnes.

Environmental aspects and the use of AI

Environmental aspects should also be taken into account if the Beijing climate researchers have their way. The Tibetan Plateau plays a decisive role in water conservation, soil retention, wind refraction and sand fixation, as well as in carbon sequestration and the preservation of biodiversity. The highlands are also considered a globally important hotspot for biodiversity conservation

However, by utilising its unique natural and socio-economic conditions to develop site-appropriate agriculture, it is entirely possible to transform the Tibetan Plateau into China's future breadbasket, the researchers write.

Of course, there are also stumbling blocks along the way: uncontrolled mining and other human activities threaten the ecological diversity on the plateau. The increasing meltwater can cause lakes to overflow and dams to collapse, which would jeopardise potential new settlers.

But Beijing is not letting up. Now that the plateau has been covered with a dense network of weather stations, artificial intelligence (AI) is to be used to analyse the data in real time. The researchers are confident that this will make it possible to predict glacier floods and optimise crop rotations.