Chinese President Xi Jinping declined a meeting with special climate envoy John Kerry this week and said the superpower would not be swayed on the issue by outside influence.
Kerry went to Beijing for four days on behalf of the Biden administration in an attempt to restart conversations about carbon emissions. The former secretary of state and 2004 presidential candidate urged China to unite on climate change, yet his words fell on deaf ears.
“The pathway and means for reaching this goal, and the tempo and intensity, should be and must be determined by ourselves, and never under the sway of others,” Xi said, as reported by People’s Daily.
Kerry told Chinese Vice President Han Zheng that “climate should be free-standing because it is a universal threat to everybody on the planet,” according to The New York Times.
Wang Yi, a top foreign affairs adviser to Xi, told Kerry that climate action “cannot be separated from the broader environment of Chinese-U.S. relations,” according to the NYT.
China emits 31% of the world’s carbon dioxide, according to the Global Carbon Budget.
“The Chinese also want to see results from the U.S. to believe it will deliver,” Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University based in China, told the NYT.
Kerry was the latest U.S. official to visit China in an effort to thaw relations, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen led a diplomatic mission there earlier this month, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Chinese officials were reportedly upset by President Joe Biden’s calling the Chinese president a “dictator” during a fundraiser in California. The two powers have also been at odds over Taiwan, with China increasing its military activity near the island.
The decision for some Chinese officials to meet with Kerry was a sign the country wants better relations, especially when its economy is struggling, one expert said.
“It’s very difficult for China to manage that confidence deficit if the most important relationship for China — the U.S.-China relationship — is in free fall,” Evan S. Medeiros, a former director for China on the National Security Council who now teaches at Georgetown University, told the NYT.
