China signs clean-tech deal with five US states to combat climate change
Governors from five US states met President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, signing an agreement aimed at pushing cooperation on the use of clean-tech businesses to combat climate change.
"We can be the core for our national leaders to learn from," Michigan governor Rick Snyder said.
Xi arrived in Seattle earlier in the day for talks on how US and Chinese experts and businesses can collaborate on in such areas as nuclear energy and smarter electricity use.
"These are the largest economies in the world, and we're the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, so improving cooperation and collaboration is really a necessity," said Brian Young, Washington state director of economic development for the clean technology sector.
"Second, it's a huge business opportunity. Both sides recognise the opportunity for job creation."
Xi also met governors Jay Inslee of Washington, Jerry Brown of California, Terry Branstad of Iowa and Kate Brown of Oregon. All five signed the agreement on use of clean-tech businesses.
Chinese leaders at the meeting included Beijing mayor Wang Anshun and Shandong governor Guo Shuqing .
US-China cooperation on climate change has been a warm area of relations between the countries.
In November, Obama and Xi announced that the countries would work together on the issue, with China announcing it would try to cap its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, or sooner if possible.
Some clean-tech firms in Washington state, which relies largely on hydropower and where natural gas is cheap, may find markets and investment in China sooner than they might domestically.
Also on Tuesday, TerraPower, an energy company founded by Bill Gates, entered into an agreement with China National Nuclear Corp to work together on next-generation nuclear power plant technology.
Meanwhile, about 100 people protested in the city against human rights abuses in China.
In downtown Seattle, a crowd supporting Falun Gong, a religious group that says it is repressed in China, waved signs against what it called China's theft of prisoners' organs.
"Falun Gong practitioners have been put into forced labour camps, prisons, and mental hospitals, and they have been killed for their organs," said Michael Green, 38, of Seattle.
At the same time, a group of pro-Chinese protesters, some of them wearing hats emblazoned with "USA", waved Chinese and US flags and large red cloth signs that read "Hello President Xi" in Chinese characters.
There were no arrests by late Tuesday during what police said were peaceful demonstrations.
China's official atheist Communist Party does not tolerate challenges to its rule and religious activities must be sanctioned by the state.
In 1999, then-president Jiang Zemin launched a campaign to crush Falun Gong after thousands of practitioners staged a peaceful sit-in outside the leadership compound in Beijing to demand official recognition of their movement.
In Seattle, pro-Tibetan groups joined the protests, as did activists calling for China to curb militarisation of the South China Sea.
