UN chief urges China and US to keep bilateral disputes out of climate fight

Name: What is China doing about climate change?
Uploaded: 2021-09-10T20:53:55.000Z
Duration: 6 min 55 s
Description: What is China doing about climate change?

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ appeal to the two superpowers comes ahead of the UN COP26 climate change conference next month

Breakthroughs in the area could still be made if ‘core concerns’ on both sides were respected, China’s Xi Jinping told US’ Joe Biden in a phone call on Thursday

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Reuters

Published: 4:53am, 11 Sep 2021Updated: 7:43pm, 11 Sep 2021

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the United States and China on Friday to prevent any problems between the superpowers from harming cooperation to combat climate change ahead of the UN COP26 climate change conference next month.

Ties between the world’s two biggest economies have been languishing at their lowest point in decades over issues ranging from human rights to transparency over the origins of Covid-19.

“We understand that there are problems in the relations between the US and China, but those problems do not interfere with the needs of both the US and China to do everything possible to make sure that the COP is a success, independently of the relations between the two,” Guterres told reporters.

During a visit to China last week by US climate envoy John Kerry, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said climate change was an “oasis” in China-US relations but could not be separated from broader disputes.

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What is China doing about climate change?

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed climate change during a phone call on Thursday. Xi said that if “core concerns” on both sides were respected, breakthroughs could still be made in the area of climate change.