China silent on climate change discussion amid extreme weather

Several residents in Beijing said that they were aware of changing climate trends, but were reluctant to say more

Record heat and historic floods in China this summer have failed to ignite domestic public debate about how the world's top carbon polluter can mitigate climate change, leaving campaigners frustrated at an opportunity missed.

While state media and officials have said in the past that climate change makes China more vulnerable to extreme weather, few have made the connection this year, and have been even more reluctant to link it to China's own emissions - now around a third of the global total and rising.

"I actually see that as a big missed opportunity, actually, for the Chinese government to garner enough social support for its climate agenda," Li Shuo, senior adviser with Greenpeace in Beijing, said.

"And at the very minimum to reach a sort of a new narrative that is closer to the reality on the ground."

There was no major spike in searches for climate change in recent weeks on either the popular Weibo microblog platform or China's biggest search engine, Baidu, according to their official search indexes. That's despite widespread discussion about severe weather, in which at least 33 people died in Beijing alone.