U.S.-China Relations Are Frayed But A Climate Crisis Will Destroy It

The Chinese treated U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry with more respect than House Republicans during a recent congressional hearing. Undoubtedly, friction abounds between the U.S. and Chinese governments, emanating from tariffs imposed during the last administration and the former president’s demeaning comments about the “Chinese Virus.”

But Kerry is a polished diplomat — a follower of Founding Father Ben Franklin, who said, “No nation was ever ruined by trade” — the same fundamentals that led to economic cooperation and mutual prosperity between the two nations. Indeed, globalism is more important than ever in solving the climate change problem.

And that’s why Kerry met with his Chinese counterparts Wang Yi and Xie Zhenhua in Beijing — a move that corresponds with extreme heat in the United States and China, the two biggest carbon emitters on the planet. During the climate envoy’s trip, the northwestern region of Xinjiang suffered temperatures of 126 Fahrenheit — reminiscent of just a few years ago when the air quality was so poor in China’s major cities that people stayed home.

Thankfully, that’s been changing. While fossil fuels comprise about 60% of China’s electricity mix, it is a global leader in renewable energy: 32% last year. China is planning 450 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Gobi desert by 2030 — twice the wind and solar installed in this country. Nuclear energy and hydropower make up the rest. For its part, President Xi has reaffirmed his country’s commitment to the climate battle, which is necessary because multinational corporations are relocating there in droves.

The promise: By 2030, China’s CO2 emissions will peak, and by 2060, it will be carbon neutral. “Every industry in China is moving in the right direction regarding the country’s decarbonization goals,” Eric Fang, president of the National Center for Sustainable Development, told me after a business trip to China this week.

But the United States always asks China to do “more, more, more,” he says. “And it is — a country set to hit 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity by 2025. We cannot deal with climate change alone, not by a single country, but the whole world needs to work together. Energy efficiency, decarbonization, and green energy utilization are all important to solving climate change.”

China’s Not the One Dragging Its Feet

Fang and I first met in China in 2019 when I visited the Suzhou Industrial Park, which looked like a movie set — a carefully planned city built on 27 square miles. Like much of China, a generation ago, it was all farmland. However, today dozens of Fortune 500 companies such as Samsung, Siemens, and Philips
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are located there, along with the best and brightest from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.

Fang just returned from Taichang, a city of a half million located in Jiangsu Province, hosting 2,000 foreign-owned manufacturers, of which 450 are German. It’s a microcosm encapsulating China’s role in international economics and the sciences — “a whole new way of green manufacturing and digital management that is improving productivity and energy efficiency while reducing carbon emissions.”

In March, Nike
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launched its China Zero Carbon Smart Logistics Center — a wind-powered facility with flags that say “Just Do It” in this city. Meanwhile, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is building a wind turbine plant in Taichang, calling it “the centerpiece of our Asia-Pacific offshore manufacturing activities.”

“This shows us that an international management style can prevail in an old Chinese culture, transforming an aging city into a modern digital city,” says Fang.

Clean energy is China’s future — not just because it is trying to appeal to global citizens but also because it sells its wind turbines and solar panels worldwide. So China will oblige the United States and take further steps to cut its methane emissions, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. It’s a cost-effective and technically-feasible way to improve air quality and battle global warming.

China’s growing pains and a long Covid-19 economic recovery are causing some economic jitters. It is a country with 1.4 billion people and a 400-600 million middle class. It’s moving its people from rural regions with limited opportunities to job centers, requiring high technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Hence the push to invest in cutting-edge cities.

Consider that Beijing and Shanghai have populations of 15-to-20 million. And that means a lot of traffic and pollution, requiring it to deploy fancy solutions like using cloud data to analyze traffic patterns and recommend parking spaces — to minimize congestion and improve air quality.

Tariffs, human rights disputes, territorial battles, and the giant spy balloon floating across the United States have led to a deepening fray. But Chinese officials quickly point out that the United States is a friend — a country with shared economic, educational, and cultural interests. The question for U.S. policymakers is whether to build on this history or to cut the legs from underneath it.

The smart move is to repair it — and to deal with the challenges ahead.

The two nations have common purpose, a point emphasized by John Kerry and his Chinese climate counterparts. Actually, Chinese officials just honored former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, with President Xi calling him an “old friend.” China, though, has a long history and uncommon traditions and will not remake itself in America’s image.

“China and the United States are the world’s two biggest economies,” a Chinese official told this reporter when asked if policymakers had grown tired of the previous president’s insults. “Stable relations serve the interest of our two countries. There is a common desire for the world at large. We feel the American side is always increasing its demands and changing its policies.”

Solving climate change requires international participation, especially from the globe’s two biggest emitters. Envoy Kerry is a true believer dedicated to the climate cause, representing this country’s policies. And China is doing what it can to create the world’s most innovative cities to attract the globe’s foremost companies — enterprises that demand clean energy and quality of life. A climate breakdown will destroy all that and more.