Opinion | US climate U-turn offers China both challenges and opportunities

Name: Can China claim the leadership mantle after the US quits the WHO and Paris Agreement?
Uploaded: 2025-02-12T08:30:06.000Z
Duration: 6 min 23 s
Description: Can China claim the leadership mantle after the US quits the WHO and Paris Agreement?

Beijing can no longer expect to use climate cooperation as a bargaining chip with Washington. But a chance arises to seize global climate leadership

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Climate activists project a message onto Tower Bridge with a silhouette of Donald Trump, ahead of Cop29 climate talks, in London, Britain, on November 7, 2024. Photo: Reuters

Hao Tan

Published: 4:30pm, 12 Feb 2025Updated: 8:30pm, 12 Feb 2025

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump, as expected, ordered the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement. He also ordered the elimination of government support for electric vehicle targets and reinstated policies favouring domestic oil and gas production.

The previous Biden administration made climate change a cornerstone of its domestic agenda and foreign policy, seeking to re-establish the US as a global climate leader. The major shift in US climate and energy policy under Trump will create challenges and opportunities for China’s climate diplomacy, as well as its broader economic and security strategies.

One of the biggest challenges is the loss of climate change as a key platform in US-China diplomacy. Under Biden, climate cooperation was one of the few areas of engagement in an otherwise tense relationship. Maintaining an approach to China that was “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be”, as former secretary of state Antony Blinken put it in a speech in 2021, climate envoy John Kerry made multiple visits to China, even during heightened tensions.

China, however, took the stance that climate cooperation could not be isolated from the broader relationship. In high-level meetings, Chinese officials linked climate negotiations to broader diplomatic concerns, demanding the US ease pressure on China in other areas in exchange.

Under Trump, climate cooperation is no longer likely to serve as China’s bargaining chip. Despite this, the US withdrawal from climate leadership presents significant opportunities for China.

06:23

Can China claim the leadership mantle after the US quits the WHO and Paris Agreement?

Trump’s rollback of Biden-era climate policies is likely to lead to the stagnation, even dismantling, of several climate initiatives, including US climate and energy bilateral partnerships with Germany, India, Japan and Brazil. Similarly, major US banks are withdrawing from climate finance initiatives such as the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, under pressure from Republican lawmakers to distance themselves from industry groups that support carbon cuts.