John Kerry’s visit to Beijing in late July 2023 marked an attempt to resume U.S.-China climate cooperation. Such cooperation has been a stop-start affair in recent years. The Joint Glasgow Declaration of November 2021 —a product of more than three dozen negotiating sessions — signaled a bilateral commitment to cooperation across a host of climate issues. But China broke off bilateral climate dialogue after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in April 2022. With Kerry’s visit, both sides confirmed that they were willing once again to work together on climate; according to Kerry, they will convene follow-ups before this year’s COP28 on issues including renewable energy and methane. But there were no new bilateral agreements.
New agreements may come at COP28, but the long-term prospects for cooperation remain uncertain. The U.S. has pressed throughout the Biden administration to treat climate separately from the rest of the relationship. China has consistently refused. It prefers to condition climate engagement upon the “general environment of China-U.S. relations.” This stance exposes climate talks to the flashpoints of their deepening rivalry, as the past year’s freeze in talks demonstrated. The visits of senior Biden Administration officials have strengthened channels for managing those flashpoints, but they cannot eliminate the deep-rooted tensions of great-power competition. Indeed, climate is bound up in this competition, as the two countries jostle for leadership as manufacturers in global renewables value chains and financiers of the Global South’s energy transition. This development is in some ways welcome — it can create a great race-to-the-top for climate progress. (The U.S. passed landmark climate legislation last year in part to compete with China for cleantech manufacturing leadership.) But where cooperation matters, it makes it more challenging.
Officials should look beyond bilateral climate cooperation to channels that are better insulated from the ups and downs of the relationship.
Against this backdrop, how can U.S.-China climate cooperation be durable and effective? Officials should look beyond bilateral climate cooperation to channels that are better insulated from the ups and downs of the relationship. Three channels stand out here: (a) multilateral arrangements, (b) subnational partnerships, and (c) people-to-people exchange. The first two institutionalize engagements outside of the formal channels of bilateral relations while both sides value the third even in periods of tension.
These forms of “de-bilateralized cooperation” fulfill many of the aims of U.S.-China climate engagement. Such engagement can no longer bear fruits like the bilateral deals that enabled the Paris Agreement. But engagement still allows the two countries to gather information about each other’s priorities and activities; coordinate and signal leadership on global governance challenges; and exchange policy strategies and technological knowledge that support cutting emissions. Bilateral engagement is best for some of these ends. High-level meetings like those in Kerry’s visit, for instance, allow authoritative and frank communication on national priorities to ground more effective working-level exchanges. And, of course, bilateral frictions like technology transfer or solar panel trade require bilateral solutions.
But at least some of these aims of engagement — mutual understanding, strategic coordination, and knowledge-sharing — can be met by frameworks beyond bilateralism. Multilateral arrangements, subnational partnerships, and people-to-people exchange allow U.S.-China climate cooperation by other means.
Multilateral arrangements entail embedding U.S.-China climate engagement in multilateral contexts: leading joint initiatives in international forums, for instance, or sponsoring green development projects in consortiums with international partners. These frameworks allow the two countries to work together under multilateral auspices, tying U.S.-China partnerships to more stable diplomatic arrangements. They are natural venues for coordinating on global governance issues: building shared standards for climate finance, for instance, requires international consensus. And many challenges where policy and technical knowledge-sharing matters — managing high-renewables grids, monitoring methane emissions, building carbon accounting systems, and more — are ones faced by all countries, not just the U.S. and China. Everyone benefits from knowledge-sharing in these forums.
The two countries already have a successful example of partnering in multilateral institutions: the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG), which they have jointly chaired since 2021. It continued to meet after China broke off bilateral discussions in 2022. Officials should expand on this model at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November by setting up new co-chaired working groups on climate topics like shipping, carbon accounting, or carbon capture and storage. (The latter, indeed, could be a rebrand of the moribund Expert Group on Clean Fossil Energy.) These would be welcome deliverables for the possible Biden-Xi meeting at the summit. For China especially, such agreements could be a useful (if limited) signal of support for multilateral climate diplomacy with Western powers, amidst accusations of Chinese obstructionism at this summer’s G20 climate negotiations.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and China should also look to build multi-country financing or capacity-building consortiums for green development and climate adaptation in developing countries. These are especially promising, as Tufts University professor Kelly Sims Gallagher argues, in smaller markets less valuable for commercial competition.
Subnational cooperation is another way to embed U.S.-China climate cooperation in more durable contexts. During the Trump administration, U.S. states and cities created independent alliances to support the Paris Agreement and maintain some form of positive climate diplomacy. California built up its own partnership with China by signing direct cooperation agreements with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and California-based institutions provide serious expertise on climate matters for federal authorities. The two countries can work with California to use this partnership as a basis for broader state-level knowledge-sharing on shared challenges that Chinese and U.S. subnational governments face, like climate adaptation and circular economy development.
China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu holds up the signed Memorandum of Understanding with California during a virtual meeting with California’s Governor Gavin Newsom. Credit: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom
One particularly important area is grid management and power market design. Kerry highlighted integrating renewables in the power sector to reduce coal emissions as a focus area for U.S.-China discussions after his Beijing visit. China’s surge in coal power permitting in 2022 reflects a desperation among provincial authorities responsible to protect against blackouts in their territories – an expensive, highly-polluting approach. A U.S.-China Low-Carbon Grids Forum under the California-China framework can bring together state, regional, and provincial grid and market operators on better strategies for maintaining grid security.
…the two countries should de-bilateralize engagement by using multilateral arrangements, subnational partnerships, and people-to-people exchange.
Lastly, deepening people-to-people exchange eases information flows and deepens mutual understanding amidst bilateral tension. People-to-people exchange has fallen dramatically since the pandemic; U.S. students studying in China are down 97 percent since 2018-19. Both sides recognize this problem. The most concrete outcome of Secretary Antony Blinken’s visit to China in June 2023 was a pledge to work together on increasing commercial flights between the two countries. Authorities should build upon this by partnering with universities and philanthropists to build climate-focused exchanges: for instance, graduate scholarships with joint programming, or mid-career fellowships for sustainability and business professionals. They can also bring back exchange programs like Fulbright China that support U.S.-China climate research networks.
U.S.-China climate cooperation of all forms would benefit from a better bilateral relationship. But major changes there are unlikely. Instead, the two countries should de-bilateralize engagement by using multilateral arrangements, subnational partnerships, and people-to-people exchange. This “cooperation by other means” can deliver the benefits of engagement while controlling the risks of disruption.
Edmund Downie is a PhD student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He studies political economy and decarbonization pathways modeling in China and India, with an interest in how state-business relations affect low-carbon transition trajectories.
