Smokes rise from chimneys of a coal-fired power station in Shanghai August 11, 2009. REUTERS/Aly Song

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s carbon emissions will start to fall by 2050, its top climate change policymaker said, the first time the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases has given a timeframe for a decline, the Financial Times reported Saturday.

The comments by Su Wei did not indicate at what level emissions would top out. He restated Beijing’s view that because China still needs to expand its economy to pull people out of poverty, it was too soon to discuss emissions caps, the Financial Times said.

At a G8 meeting in July, China and India resisted calls to agree to a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2050, posing a major obstacle for a new United Nations pact due to be agreed upon in Copenhagen in mid-December.

“China’s emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050,” the Financial Times quoted Su, director-general of the climate change department at the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning body, as saying in an interview.

“China will not continue growing emissions without limit or insist that all nations must have the same per-capita emissions. If we did that, this earth would be ruined.”