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Sarah Zheng

Echo Xie

China and the United States are expected to discuss cutting carbon emissions and fossil fuel projects during a visit by US climate envoy John Kerry, who is due to arrive in Tianjin on Tuesday night.
Kerry will stay in the northeastern city until Friday, meeting his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua for a follow-up to their talks in Shanghai in April.
The former secretary of state will head to Tianjin after climate talks in Tokyo earlier in the day, including with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
The trip comes as China and the US are at odds over a range of issues – with climate change one of the few areas where they are working together.
In Tianjin, both sides will seek to build on their commitment made in Shanghai to work together to implement the Paris Agreement and develop long-term strategies for carbon neutrality by late October, when the UN’s climate change conference, COP26, will begin in Glasgow, the US State Department said on Monday. China’s environment ministry said they would discuss climate cooperation and exchange views on COP26.

The talks come as the US has urged China to take more climate action ahead of the UN conference, which has set critical goals for countries to work more aggressively to halve emissions over the next decade and reach net-zero carbon emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. A devastating UN report earlier this month warned that more immediate and ambitious climate action was needed, in a “code red for humanity”.
Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia, said if China were to make new commitments before COP26, a ban on funding overseas coal-fired power plants was something it could deliver on.
“Commitments on overseas coal-fired power projects have an impact on reducing emissions and they are politically doable,” he said. “We would be happy to see China get more ambitious on these issues along with actions to ensure an early peaking of emissions before COP26.”


Kerry’s trip comes after US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman’s trip to Tianjin in July, when senior Chinese officials presented the US with lists of explicit demands to reverse course on the increasingly strained relationship, including to drop an extradition request for Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou and to end visa restrictions for Communist Party members.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated those demands over the weekend during a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Afghanistan, saying that Beijing would “consider how to engage with the United States based on its attitude towards China”.
But even as US President Joe Biden’s administration has said it wants to work with China in areas such as climate change while engaging in competition and confrontation in other arenas, cooperation between the powers has proven difficult so far.
As the world’s top two polluters, China and the US both agree on the need for climate action, but have been divided on their responsibility. The US has sought to pressure China to take greater action, including for Beijing to stop financing coal plants, but Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the US-hosted climate summit in April that it was developed countries rather than developing ones that “need to increase climate ambition and action”.


Under Biden, the US rejoined the Paris Agreement and has set targets to cut greenhouse gas pollution by around 50 per cent by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. China has also set aggressive targets to reach peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
In London last month, Kerry called on countries to speed up action to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century and urged China to do more.
As of April, countries representing 55 per cent of global GDP had announced 2030 commitments consistent with the 1.5 degrees target, but Kerry said the world could not achieve that goal without bringing the remaining 45 per cent on board with the task.
Without sufficient reduction by China, together with the rest of the world, the goal of 1.5 degrees was essentially impossible, he said, calling on China to peak emissions earlier.
“China absolutely can help lead the world to success by peaking and starting to reduce emissions early during this critical decade of 2020 to 2030,” Kerry said.


An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited Li Shuo of Greenpeace East Asia as suggesting that China could announce new climate pledges this week. The story has been amended to reflect that this was not Li's meaning.


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US climate envoy John Kerry is due to arrive on Tuesday night following a stop in Tokyo and will meet Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua
Ban on funding overseas coal-fired plants would be ‘politically doable’ commitment if Beijing makes new pledges before COP26, observer says



US climate envoy John Kerry is due to arrive on Tuesday night following a stop in Tokyo and will meet Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua.


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Climate change diplomacy