Merkel presses China on climate change

By Claudia Kade

BEIJING (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged China on Monday to do more to halt climate change, prompting the response that the developed West has been polluting the skies for much longer than the newly developing Chinese.

Merkel is on her second visit to China as chancellor and the trip comes four months before world environment ministers meet in Bali to try to launch new talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

She pressed for stronger protection of intellectual property rights and said the ground rules for gathering resources should be the same worldwide, an apparent criticism of China's relations with Sudan.

China has sizeable economic interests in Sudan and has been under pressure to take a more critical approach to Khartoum after accusations aid from Beijing feeds violence in Darfur.

Premier Wen Jiabao said China would do everything it could to fight product piracy but that there were differences concerning climate change.

"The Chinese wish, like all people, for blue skies, green hills and clear water," he told a joint news conference.

"China's development is an opportunity, not a threat," he said earlier.

He said the task of reducing emissions was tougher in China than in Germany because it had more people and had not yet reached economic growth of industrialised countries in terms of GDP per capita.