BEIJING (AP) — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry was holding talks Monday with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing as the U.S. tries to restore contacts that were disrupted by disputes over trade, Taiwan , human rights and China’s territorial claims.
China’s official Xinhua news agency said Kerry was meeting Xie Zhenhua for the first face-to-face climate discussions between representatives of the world’s two worst climate polluters after a nearly year-long hiatus.
China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world and has proceeded with the construction of new plants, while making progress with renewables such as solar and wind energy.
However, congressional Republicans who questioned Kerry before his trip sometimes broke down to challenge the existence of the scientifically established fact of climate change.
But with Republicans and Democrats generally accepting the science behind climate warming, much of the criticism from GOP committee members focused on the desirability of the United States engaging in climate negotiations with China.
China has pledged to balance carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The US and European Union have urged China to adopt more ambitious reduction targets.
Kerry is expected to push for a reduction in China’s reliance on coal and set targets on methane, which, along with carbon dioxide, is a major contributor to Earth’s warming climate. As with the United States and Europe, China has experienced stretches of record high temperatures that have threatened crops and prompted cities to open Cold War-era air raid shelters to help residents escape the heat .
US lawmakers blamed China for refusing to make bigger cuts in climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions and the country’s insistence that it was still a developing economy and did not have to keep up with the same climate standards as developed Western economies.
Kerry responded that the clear disparity between China’s claims and the size of its economy, as the world’s second largest, cannot be allowed to block global progress in reducing emissions. He also ruled out persuading China to meet the same emissions reduction requirements faced by other major economies, at least on this visit.
Kerry is the third senior Biden administration official in recent weeks to travel to China to meet with his counterparts there, following Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
China severed some mid- and high-level contacts with the Biden administration, including on climate issues, to show its anger at then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August trip to the ‘self-government of Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as its territory and held threatening military exercises around the island to herald its blockade and invasion threats that could lead the US into a major conflict in a region crucial to the global economy.
Other issues have rocked relations since then, including the transit over the United States of what the Americans say was a Chinese spy balloon.
A blow suffered by Xie, China’s top climate diplomat, also contributed to a stall in climate talks between the United States and China.
The Biden administration’s goal with Beijing now is to achieve “stability, if we can, without conceding anything,” Kerry told lawmakers ahead of his visit.
“What we’re trying to do is find ways to cooperate to deal with the crisis” of climate, Kerry said. China, he said, “is fundamental to being able to solve this problem.”
In a commentary published on Sunday, Xinhua said the recent official interactions between the United States and China are a “good sign to avoid further miscalculations and get bilateral relations back on track.”
However, he added that Beijing was seeking more concessions on the political side, something the US has said it will not offer.
“It is especially true for the White House to bear in mind that trying to compartmentalize cooperation with – or competition and repression against – China in bilateral ties is simply unrealistic in practice and unacceptable to Beijing,” Xinhua said.
“For China-US cooperation to be healthy and sustainable, bilateral ties must be treated as a whole,” he said.
