US climate envoy John Kerry to meet officials in China this week to discuss environmental crisis concerns

John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate envoy, will travel to China later this week to meet Chinese officials to discuss “raising global climate ambition,” the US State Department said on Tuesday. Kerry was expected to arrive in Shanghai on Wednesday, ahead of meetings with officials on Thursday and Friday, Reuters reported. Those meetings will include discussions with Kerry’s Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, whom Kerry has lauded as a “capable advocate”. Kerry may conduct additional talks with other top Chinese officials, including vice-premier Han Zheng, top diplomat Yang Jiechi, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, reported The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the planning. Kerry’s travel to the region will also include a visit to Seoul, the State Department said. The Washington Post was the first to report over the weekend that a trip to China by Kerry was being planned for this week. His visit will mark the first to China by a Biden administration official, and will come after a testy meeting of the two countries’ top diplomats in Alaska last month. The Biden administration’s first three months have seen the continuation of many of the same tensions that permeated relations between Washington and Beijing during the Trump administration, including clashes over human rights in Xinjiang, democracy in Hong Kong, technology, trade, the South China Sea and Taiwan. US issues subpoena to Chinese firm as part of supply chain review Soon after the State Department confirmed Kerry’s travel to Shanghai, the White House announced that US President Joe Biden had dispatched an ex-lawmaker and two former State Department officials to Taiwan to meet top officials there. The selection of the “unofficial” delegation, made up of former US senator Chris Dodd and former deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, sent “an important signal about the US commitment to Taiwan and its democracy,” the White House said in a statement obtained by Reuters. Yet amid strained US-China relations, both countries – the world’s two largest carbon dioxide emitters – have signalled a willingness to work together on combating the climate crisis. Speaking to news channel India Today during a visit to New Delhi last week, Kerry said he was “hopeful” but “not confident at this point” about securing cooperation from Beijing. “We hope that China will come to the table and lead,” he said. “We want to work with China in doing this.” At the same time, he has cast some doubt on whether China’s emissions targets are sufficiently aggressive, saying during an International Monetary Fund discussion event last week: “The problem is that the current curve shows China peaking and then basically plateauing, not coming down sufficiently.” Joe Biden sends unofficial delegation to Taiwan to underscore commitment The Biden administration has committed to working towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, one decade ahead of China’s target. Ahead of a US-hosted climate summit next week, the Biden administration was expected to unveil a new round of commitments in order to achieve its 2050 net-zero goal. In an open letter to Biden on Tuesday, a coalition of more than 300 businesses and investors urged his administration to adopt an ambitious target of reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Beijing has yet to publicly confirm its participation in the Earth Day summit scheduled for April 22 and 23, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend, the South China Morning Post previously reported. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki rejected the idea that the summit should be seen as an opportunity to “rebuild” the relationship between Washington and Beijing. “We believe that the most important steps that we can take is to rebuild and support our own economy here at home and to also be candid about areas where we have concerns,” Psaki said, citing human rights concerns and issues around technology. Facing speculation from the political right that China would dangle cooperation on climate in return for concessions from Washington on other areas of contention, Kerry has repeatedly stressed that climate should be seen as a stand-alone issue. China’s Xi Jinping likely to take part in Joe Biden’s Earth Day climate summit Speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi last week, he vowed that “none of the other issues we have with China – and there are issues – is held hostage to or is engaged in a trade for what we need to do on climate”. News of his trip to Shanghai was nonetheless met with criticism from Republicans on Tuesday, with Representative Michael McCaul of Texas casting doubt on China’s commitment to tackling climate change, citing the country’s continuing expansion of coal-fired power. In a statement, the lead Republican on the House foreign affairs committee said the US “should be working with countries that want to solve international problems, not those that are creating or worsening them.”