BEIJING (AP) — China is willing to work with Washington on reducing global warming as long as its political demands are met, the country’s vice president told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Wednesday.
Vice President Han Zheng told Kerry that addressing climate change was “an important aspect of China-U.S. cooperation,” but was predicated on mutual respect, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He said it must proceed “on the basis of U.S. attendance to core issues that concern both parties, fully engaging and exchanging ideas.”
Ties between the countries have hit a historic low amid disputes over tariffs, access to technology, human rights, China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and threats against self-governing Taiwan.
Kerry said he had “very detailed meetings with a lot to catch up on” during his three days of talks, following China’s suspension of most contacts with President Joe Biden’s administration last August, including over efforts to address global warming.
China was displaying its anger over then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. Kerry, a former secretary of state and presidential candidate, said there “are a lot of things that we very clearly agreed on after all this time,” but limited his comments at a news conference mainly to climate issues.
Climate “doesn’t wait for these things. It is not something that you can just say, OK stop, while we’re doing something else and we’ll come back to you. It’s going to continue,” Kerry said.
“The climate crisis is a universal threat to humankind and we all have a responsibility to deal with it as rapidly as we can,” he said.
Kerry discussed climate issues with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, and told China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Tuesday that the Biden administration is “very committed” to stabilizing relations between the world’s two biggest economies, as the countries seek to restart high-level contacts.
China has chafed at U.S. criticism of its aggressive assertion of its claims in the South China Sea and of rights abuses against Muslim and Buddhist minorities, and at U.S. travel sanctions imposed on officials ranging from the Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong to the country’s defense minister.
Contacts have only slowly been restored and China continues to refuse to restart dialogue between the People’s Liberation Army, the party’s military branch, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Kerry is the third senior Biden administration official to travel in recent weeks to China for meetings with their counterparts following Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
In the latest challenge to bilateral relations, China is criticizing an upcoming stopover in the United States by Taiwan’s vice president and the front-runner in next year’s presidential election, William Lai. On Wednesday, the director of the U.S. de facto embassy in Taiwan, Sandra Oudkirk, said there is “absolutely no reason for (China) to use the transit as a pretext for any sort of provocative action. And we certainly hope that they don’t.”
The U.S. is a key Taiwanese ally but maintains only unofficial relations with the island in deference to Beijing.
China and the U.S. are the world’s two worst climate polluters and dialogue between them after a nearly yearlong hiatus is considered crucial to addressing the threat of higher temperatures and more extreme weather.
The U.S. and China are hoping for further talks on limiting the production of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses before the U.N. COP 28 negotiations to be held in Dubai in November and December, Kerry said.