BEIJING: China’s President Xi Jinping will attend a US-led climate change summit at the invitation of President Joe Biden, in the first meeting between the two leaders since the advent of the new US administration.
Biden has invited dozens of world leaders to join the two-day virtual summit starting on Thursday, after bringing the United States back into the 2015 Paris Agreement on cutting global carbon emissions.
President Xi will attend the summit via video and will deliver an “important” speech, Hua Chunying, spokeswoman at the Chinese foreign ministry, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Beijing and Washington have persistently clashed over a range of issues from alleged human rights abuses to China’s economic clout over other nations.
In Alaska last month, US and Chinese officials held the first high-level in-person talks that bristled with rancor and yielded no diplomatic breakthroughs. But the two countries, the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, have rediscovered a common interest in battling climate change.
Last week, US climate envoy John Kerry travelled to Shanghai to meet with his Chinese counterpart in the first high-level visit to China by a Biden administration official.
Both agreed on concrete actions “in the 2020s” to reduce emissions The talks also marked a resumption of climate dialogue halted during Donald Trump’s administration, who withdrew from the Paris agreement.
Microsoft Corp co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates will also address a climate summit hosted by President Joe Biden this week. Nearly all of the 40 world leaders that were invited have confirmed they will attend.
Gates will address the second day of the summit, which kicks off virtually on Thursday and will conclude on Friday.
The White House event paves the way for another global summit in November in the Scottish city of Glasgow that aims to ensure the world meets a goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are among the leaders of countries that contribute the most to emissions who will speak.
