Amid global climate crisis, China says it will deal with climate in its own way

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday (July 19) that his government would decide how it will address climate change. Citing Chinese state media, a report by The Washington Post said that President Xi did not address his remark to US climate envoy John Kerry, who was in Beijing to revive climate talks between the US and China. Instead, he gathered top officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to set his own environmental agenda without any input from Washington.

Xi said that China would pursue its commitments “unswervingly,” but the pathways, intensity, and pace of such efforts “should and must be” determined without outside interference.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Li Shuo, a senior policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia, said that the Chinese president's remarks delivered at the time Kerry was in Beijing were no coincidence. Shuo said Xi showed that China would decide its own path "in achieving carbon goals and will not be ordered about by others."

More work needed to build US-China climate relations: Kerry

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, US climate envoy Kerry said that more work was needed to build climate relations between the US and China. "We - our team and the United States administration - came to Beijing in order to unstick what has been stuck since almost last August."

"This is our first in-person meeting since that time, and we're here to break new ground," Kerry added.

Climate talks between Washington and Beijing were suspended last year following the visit of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. Kerry also told reporters on Wednesday that despite the hiatus of the last year, the two countries found many points of agreement during three days of cordial but frank discussions, and they planned to work "intensively" in the weeks ahead as they prepare for COP28 climate talks in Dubai.

"We are trying to work with China to figure out the path ahead. China is working hard to try to develop some of those new technologies as well as deploy those renewables that will become clean energy in the future. We look forward to working with China to accelerate that," the US climate envoy added.

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