Force of nature: China’s top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua steps down after more than 15 years in environment diplomacy

Name: US and China’s top climate officials hold talks as rival powers seek to ease tensions
Uploaded: 2023-12-25T14:00:19.000Z
Duration: 2 min 43 s
Description: US and China’s top climate officials hold talks as rival powers seek to ease tensions

The Cop28 summit in Dubai was likely Xie Zhenhua’s last, as the long-serving special climate envoy retires

Despite successes and setbacks, the 74-year-old is remembered as the driving force behind China’s rise as a climate leader

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Sylvie Zhuangin Beijing

Published: 10:00pm, 25 Dec 2023Updated: 10:36am, 26 Dec 2023

He is the environment expert turned diplomat who spent more than a decade negotiating climate deals for the world’s second-largest economy, navigated US-China climate diplomacy at a time when ties between the countries were at their lowest, and used his sincerity and passion to win respect from all quarters on the global stage. Cop28 in Dubai, which ended two weeks ago, is likely to have been Xie Zhenhua’s swan song.

The face of China’s international climate strategy, Xie, who turned 74 in November, is set to retire soon, according to people familiar with the matter, saying farewell to a career of almost four decades of environmental and climate diplomacy.

Climate officials and observers celebrated Xie’s achievements, saying he was the driving force behind China’s shift from being unprepared for climate action to making it a nation with ambitions to be the global climate leader.

A Tianjin native, Xie was trained as an engineering physicist at Tsinghua University in the 1970s and started his career in various government agencies responsible for environmental affairs. While he rose through the ranks, he earned a master’s degree in environmental law from Wuhan University in 1993.

Xie was made the head of the State Environmental Protection Administration in 1998 and in 2003 he was awarded the UN’s highest environmental honour, the United Nations Environment Programme Sasakawa environment

prize. But this chapter of his career had a turbulent end when he was forced to quit in 2005 over a pollution crisis caused by chemical spills in the Songhua River in northeastern China.

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US and China’s top climate officials hold talks as rival powers seek to ease tensions

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