China Calls Itself Developing Country, Setting Up Climate Fight

If China can go to the moon, asked the European Union’s climate commissioner in September, why isn’t it paying more toward climate action? Wopke Hoekstra’s quip laid bare a point of contention that will loom over November’s United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan: How can the world’s second-largest economy be simultaneously “developed”—at the cutting edge of science and technology—yet still be officially classed as “developing”—allowed concessions on emissions and access to global funds?

China likes to think of itself as a hybrid superpower, a compromise description that serves its diplomatic goals. In climate finance, though, the position is ...