SCMP Editorial

Editorial | US climate talks with China may help Joe Biden get the message

Discussions with veteran White House insider John Kerry put the ball firmly in Washington’s court regarding deteriorating relations and the growing need for diplomacy

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Beijing must hope that official contact with US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, a veteran insider of Joe Biden’s White House, may help get China’s message directly to the president’s desk. Photo: TNS

SCMP Editorial

Published: 2:02am, 8 Sep 2021Updated: 2:02am, 8 Sep 2021

From the outset of Joe Biden’s presidency, climate change emerged as the likely catalyst for restoring constructive cooperation between the United States and China. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the two sides began discussions.

They led to last week’s talks in Tianjin between China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, ahead of this year’s United Nations climate change conference.

In the wider bilateral relationship, however, such appearances and the reality could not be further apart. The US has tried to make climate change an exception to the continuation under Biden of his predecessor Donald Trump’s policies of containment and criticism.

This has hit China’s bottom line, which is that cooperation on climate change – arguably the geopolitical issue of our times – must be part of overall relations between the world’s top two powers.

Special US envoy on climate, John Kerry, and China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, talked in Tianjin. Photo: EPA-EFE

In recent days, Beijing’s messages to Washington have been clear and compelling – that as the US seeks cooperation on climate change and regime change in Afghanistan it continues to criticise China over Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan and raise the lab-leak theory on the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic; and that the American assessment of China and its approach are wrong.