John Kerry will not pull thorns for climate deal with Beijing

John Kerry has flown to Shanghai for climate talks with China, as an ‘unofficial’ US delegation visits Taiwan.

John Kerry in Dhaka earlier this month. Picture: AFP

The Biden administration’s ­climate change envoy John Kerry has said the US will not barter its “critical differences” with China to secure a climate deal, as he begins a three-day trip in Shanghai.

The visit is the first by a senior official in the new administration to China and comes a week before US President Joe Biden hosts a virtual climate summit of 17 countries — including Australia — which together make up about 80 per cent of global emissions.

On the same day Mr Kerry landed in China, an unofficial delegation of retired US officials arrived in Taipei in what the White House called “a personal signal” from Mr Biden to the democratically run island which China considers its territory.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal before flying to China, Mr Kerry said America’s concerns over economic and security issues, which include Beijing’s threats to attack Taiwan, would be “channelled separately”.

“The climate issue is a free-standing issue. It’s not for trade against the other critical differences that we have with China right now,” he said.

Climate policy is a priority of the new US president and an agreed area of potential co-­operation between the world’s two most powerful countries.

President Xi Jinping pledged in October that China — by far the world’s biggest emitter — would become carbon-neutral by 2060. That would be a decade after commitments to decarbonise made by the US, Europe, the UK, Japan and South Korea.

The US administration will release its 2030 targets before next week’s meeting. Many climate analysts expect the US target to be at least a 50 per cent reduction on 2005 levels, an ambitious ­target it would use to pressure countries including China and Australia to further outline their reduction plans.

Australia’s ambassador in Washington Arthur Sinodinos has in recent days spoken to Mr Kerry to say the Morrison government wanted to work with the US to promote investment in low-carbon technologies.

After a testy meeting last month in Alaska between senior Biden officials and their Chinese counterparts, China’s state media has adopted a more respectful tone about the Biden administration. Over the weekend, China’s official newsagency Xinhua ran a series of articles marking the 50th anniversary of a ping-pong match between Chinese and American teams in Shanghai that paved the way for Richard Nixon’s visit to China months later in 1972.

“China is willing to work with the United States to uphold the spirit of respect, friendship and win-win ping-pong competition, and to promote and achieve each other in mutually beneficial co-operation and healthy competition,” Xinhua reported in the days ahead of Mr Kerry’s visit.

The day before the visit, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met virtually with some of America’s most senior business figures, which until recent years had been one of the biggest supporters of the relationship. “We stressed that the new era of US-China relations will be defined by economic competition, but that frank communication can offset the risks of confrontation,” US-China Business Council President Craig Allen said after the meeting.

In Shanghai, Mr Kerry will meet his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, who he worked closely with on climate policy during the Obama administration.

Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development at ­Peking University, said the co-­operation on climate change was a “good start”. “Sino-US relations play a vital role in world peace and prosperity, and neither country can stand alone without the other,” he said.

Addressing the scepticism of many in America’s political system about whether China would meet its commitments on carbon reduction, Mr Kerry said satellite data, artificial intelligence and other technology could be used to ensure “accountability”.

“We will have enormous visibility, and that visibility has been very effective at creating accountability,” he said.

As Mr Biden’s climate envoy meets his Chinese counterparts this week, former US senator Chris Dodd and former deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg are visiting Taiwan at the new president’s request.

The “unofficial” delegation will mark the 42nd anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, for which Mr Biden voted when he was a US senator. A White House official said the “unofficial” delegation — which comes days after 25 Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone — was “a personal signal” from the president.