For those who think diplomacy is all about dressing well and rubbing shoulders with stars, they should try having Zheng Guoguang's job.

Zheng, director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), might be one of the country's most stressed-out diplomats. He spends many of his work hours negotiating with overseas counterparts, which can be quite taxing in this age of environmental alarm as countries scramble to enact protective legislation.

"The discussion and evaluation work is intense, and discussion about keeping or canceling certain terms is so heated," Zheng said on the sidelines of the 17th Party congress, which closed its curtains yesterday in Beijing.

"The negotiation sometimes is like a battle without gunfire," said Zheng, the 48-year-old CMA head who ascended to the current position this April.

Despite pressure from developed countries, Zheng said he was quite confident in negotiations and that he gained strength from the solid efforts China has made to address global warming issues.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol set the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility". Although every country has a common responsibility to protect the world's environment, individual countries have different degrees of obligation since they have varying capabilities and are at different stages of development.

China, which has tens of millions of people trying to solve problems with basic "survival emissions", is not in the same category as more developed countries, which should shoulder most of the blame for global warming because of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the past 200 years, Zheng said.

"Instead, China is the best player among all developing countries in environmental protection," Zheng said. "We have kicked off a national action plan and committed to cut energy consumption even though there is no international boundary on us."

Zheng said the CMA also played a key role in exchanging with weather officials from Taiwan. Although Taiwan authorities have consistently set obstacles to prevent the exchanges, the mainland has always kept the door open and shared with them whatever weather information they need, said Zheng.

"We felt in the same family every time our Taiwan counterparts came here," Zheng said. "We drank together, danced together and sang together. We welcomed them with the highest sincerity."

Back on the mainland, Zheng is probably lucky that the country's weather forecasting mechanism now draws fewer complaints as its accuracy has improved a great deal, which has helped save numerous economic losses and death tolls.

Typhoons caused fewer casualties and lower economic losses this year than in previous years, even as more of the potentially destructive storms slammed the Chinese mainland.

"This is a record low in terms of the number of people killed by typhoons," Zheng said.

Accurate forecasting and the timely distribution of emergency messages to the public are believed to be the key reasons for the improvement.

In a bid to quickly distribute accurate emergency weather information, the CMA has collaborated with the information and technology and communications departments to send messages via the Internet, television, radio, mobile TV screens and cell phones.

(China Daily 10/22/2007 page5)