Climate change requires US and China to cooperate not compete, experts warn
- At the Harvard College China Forum, participants said existential threats such as global warming require moving beyond mutual distrust
- Panel members said political courage is needed to nudge the two largest economies closer together
China and the US need to move beyond their perennial squabbles and chest thumping to address existential global problems, drawing on their collective creativity, financial expertise and manufacturing prowess, experts warned Saturday at a Harvard University conference on US-China relations.
Few expect the deep distrust between the two countries to abate any time soon. Differences over trade tariffs, semiconductor export restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea and other issues abound.
But the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in California last November and their 105-minute call this month provide some modest hope the two nations can focus on broader problems and shared concerns, the conference participants said.
“Looking back, what has been so successful has been … our willingness to forge consensus on important issues, our willingness to collaborate and cooperate [for] local public good and our willingness to agree to disagree,” said Bo Li, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund. “At a challenging time like this, this willingness is both scarce and enormously valuable.”
Li, speaking at the Harvard College China Forum under the theme “Telling the US-China Story”, highlighted in particular the bleak outlook for global warming, adding that the world is far behind even its anaemic pledges to reduce greenhouse gas and needs the leadership of China and the US.
Greenhouse gases need to be cut by at least 25 per cent by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change, Li said, yet //countries’s// announced targets would only bring it to 11 per cent – and even that is questionable given the shortage of political will.