It is “critical” for Washington and Beijing to keep working together on climate finance, US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said yesterday, urging deeper cooperation in addressing the “existential threat” of global warming.
Yellen is on a four-day trip to Beijing as the US seeks to cool tensions and stress areas of collaboration between the world’s two largest economies.
“As the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases and the largest investors in renewable energy, we have both a joint responsibility — and ability — to lead the way,” Yellen told a roundtable of experts in China, underlining a key area of cooperation despite tense bilateral relations. “Climate change is at the top of the list of global challenges, and the United States and China must work together to address this existential threat.”
Photo: Reuters
Saying that “climate finance should be targeted efficiently and effectively,” she pressed China to support existing multilateral institutions such as the Green Climate Fund, while urging for the inclusion of the private sector in transitioning toward net zero emissions.
“Both our economies seek to support partners in emerging markets and developing countries as they strive to meet their climate goals, and I believe continued US-China cooperation on climate finance is critical,” she said.
China last year briefly said that it was suspending talks on the climate after Nancy Pelosi, then-speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited Taiwan.
However, there are signs that talks could restart soon, with US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry due to travel to China to discuss cooperation on climate change, a US official said on Friday.
Besides meeting people involved in climate finance, Yellen is also expected to speak with economists and meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰), a key official in China’s economic affairs.
It is during these subsequent meetings that Yellen was expected to be able to drill down into more specific issues, ranging from the macroeconomy to trade and technology exports, said Lyu Xiang (呂祥), a Sino-US relations expert at the Beijing-headquartered Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
However, a key question is whether “big ticket items that are in the category of global challenges,” such as debt distress and climate cooperation, get bumped to the top of the agenda, said Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow for emerging technologies at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Yellen’s talks follow meetings with US businesspeople, who have expressed a host of concerns ranging from level playing fields with Chinese firms to reduced people-to-people exchanges and an uncertain business climate in the face of a national security crackdown.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS