The NRDC released two conflicting statistics about carbon dioxide emissions in mainland China. The first report claimed a 17% reduction in emissions between 1996 and 2000. The second report claimed carbon dioxide emissions fell 6 percent to 14 percent between 1996 and 1999.
The NRDC said their second report was based on "newer, more reliable figures". [1]
The major difficulty in calculating CO2 emissions in mainland China was that mainland China was massively restructuring its coal and petroleum industries in the late 1990's making year to year comparisons very difficult. In addition, mainland China was also imposing new coal mining safety standards and cracking down on illegal oil importation. Both of these meant that there could have been a large amount of fossil fuel burning which was not included in the official statistics.
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