By Xinhua writer Liu Xiaoyan

    BRUSSELS, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's recent decision to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions was "a positive contribution" to the forthcoming Copenhagen conference, signifying the Chinese government's serious stance on climate change, a Belgian researcher said here on Wednesday.

    China announced last week it would reduce the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40-45 percent compared with the level of 2005.

    Duncan Freeman, senior research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said during an interview with Xinhua China's decision was "politically very positive and it's also positive from the point of view of tackling climate change".

    "The Chinese government and the Chinese leadership have made this clear commitment, so they will be trying very hard in order to meet this commitment," he said.

    Freeman, who is the co-author of a report concerning different polices adopted by the EU and China on fighting climate change, said that, during his research, he found that over the past few years, China had begun to take climate change "very, very seriously".

    The researcher said there had been a fundamental change in the attitude of the government and the leadership of China.

    "It's quite clear that the Chinese government recognized that climate change would have an important impact on China and that a lot of that impact will be negative and they will undermine the development goals of the Chinese government," he said.

    As a result, China has adopted a number of policies in its five-year plan over recent years that tackle questions such as energy efficiency and energy conservation, according to Freeman.

    "These have had an impact on China and certainly China has the idea that it has to develop a green economy," the researcher said.

    Freeman said China's recent commitment on reducing carbon dioxide emissions was a positive contribution to the political process in Copenhagen but it was not clear whether it would be enough to produce an agreement at the conference, because there were many other factors that needed to be taken into account and many other countries involved.

    In the view of the researcher, the two issues left at the Barcelona U.N. climate change talks in early November were still far from being resolved. First, the emissions reduction targets proposed by developed countries were not ambitious enough in the eyes of developing countries. Second, developed countries were still not clear on how to finance the plan to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.

    Freeman said the two questions remained open.

    "There are big differences among the demands of some of the developed countries, developing countries and some of the NGOs in the developed world," he said.

    There are political constraints both the EU and the U.S. faced domestically, according to Freeman.

    "There is a lot of criticism, a lot of feelings in the EU, particularly in the U.S., that a commitment to an emission target will negatively impact on their economies," he said.

    In his opinion, Freeman said, a legally binding agreement seemed "unlikely" and what was likely was some broad guidelines and broad figures about how financing would be done.

    "So, I think we have to take into consideration balance between what is required and what is needed for mitigation of climate change and also what is politically possible," he said.

    The 15th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held from Dec. 7 to 18 in Copenhagen, Denmark.