The likelihood of a carbon tax in China : wishful thinking or a real possibility?

In 1992, China signed the primary international agreement on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with 154 other countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. About six years later, in May 1998, China signed the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC. At the time, China was still a moderate emitter of carbon dioxide (CO²), the main greenhouse gas (GHG) covered by the Kyoto Protocol. In August 2002, China ratified the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC and the Protocol entered into force on Febrary 16, 2005. By contrast,the United States ratified the UNFCCC in 1992, but has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The George W. Bush Administration's 2001 decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol process and the 2009 negotiations at Copenhagen have been the key events of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Although Australia signed the Protocol in 1997, it did not ratify it until Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister in December of 2007, with ratification taking effect in early 2008.