"China rejected Taiwan's bid to become a founding member of the new Chinese-led infrastructure bank for Asia in a difference over the title the island uses, which could portend how Beijing will run the new institution. In rebuffing Taiwan, Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement Monday that the island may apply for membership later and that further consultations are likely to yield an 'appropriate name' under which Taiwan can join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Beijing's decision effectively quashes Taiwan's request to join the multilateral lender as a founding member of the bank, while holding out the prospect of regular membership," reports The Wall Street Journal.
Reuters writes, "China is poised to overtake the United States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise pressure on Beijing to act. China's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, when governments were becoming aware of climate change, will outstrip those of the United States in 2015 or 2016, according to separate estimates by experts in Norway and the United States. The shift, reflecting China's stellar economic growth, raises questions about historical blame for rising temperatures and more floods, desertification, heatwaves and sea level rise. Almost 200 nations will meet in Paris in December to work out a global deal to fight climate actions beyond 2020."
According to The New York Times, "China's island-building activities have destroyed about 300 acres of coral reefs and are causing 'irreversible and widespread damage to the biodiversity and ecological balance' of the South China Sea...'China has pursued these activities unilaterally, disregarding people in the surrounding states who have depended on the sea for their livelihood for generations,' the foreign affairs spokesman Charles Jose said during a news briefing in Manila... China has been undertaking land reclamation projects on the sand spits, islets and submerged reefs of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, according to satellite images released in the last year."