Remember a few months ago when China was the ‘good guy’ of climate change commitments (and the US, despite Obama’s efforts, was the ‘bad guy‘?

Both these were in fact examples of politicking ahead of Copenhagen – the first to flatter China into doing more, the second largely coming from the EU to pressure the US administration and Congress (!). The US itself has been involved in that former effort.

But as far as the developed world powers are concerned, it’s no more Mr Nice Guy for China. As Fiona Harvey writes, since the meeting began, developed world officials – not least US envoy Todd Stern, who earlier this year praised China’s efforts – are now coming down harder on the emerging superpower.

Again, the two big topics are the differences over the Kyoto Protocol (and by extension, how big and how binding different countries’ commitments will be) and the transfer of money from wealthy to poor nations to help with the cost of adapting to and mitigating climate change.

African leaders are taking a strong stand on Kyoto, walking out of one of the meetings yesterday and suspending talks for several hours. Developing countries support Kyoto because is legally binding. But developed countries want a new agreement that includes the US – which will never ratify a Kyoto-based agreement – and big emerging polluters such as China, which were not covered in the protocol.

As Andrew Ward explains in the FT’s daily podcast, this kind of brinkmanship, so close to the arrival of heads of state to nut out an agreement, raises questions about how reconcilable the two views are. But developing countries are also impatient – with one representative telling the Washington Post “We wasted a whole Sunday exchanging the same rhetoric. I’ve heard it all.”

Financing is the bedrock of the talks at Copenhagen this week. Developed countries must agree sufficient financing to poor countries to enable them to reduce their emissions and deal with the effects of climate change, or the developing nations have threatened to walk away – as demonstrated on Monday.

Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary of the UK, has been made one of the co-chairs of a group set up at the Copenhagen climate talks to draw up a new text on financing.

Groups have been set up on all the key subjects, and each is co-chaired by representatives from developed and developing countries. Miliband’s counterpart on the financing group will be the Ghanaian environment minister, Hani Sherry Ayittey.