Xi Jinping arrived in San Fransisco on Tuesday for a highly anticipated summit with US President Joe Biden — where the Chinese leader will likely try to bolster his country’s troubled economy and push back on perceived US efforts to suppress it.
That Xi is on his first trip to the US in six years — a four-day visit that includes his attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation international forum — is remarkable in itself.
The leaders of the world’s top two economies have not spoken since they last met on the sidelines of another international gathering in Bali, Indonesia in November 2022.
To arrange this meeting, their governments have had to navigate a number of contentious issues: from the handling of an allegedly rogue Chinese surveillance balloon to Beijing’s targeting of international businesses, and tit-for-tat restrictions over high tech.
Expectations for major breakthroughs at Wednesday’s meeting are low.
Xi is heading into the summit as he struggles to revive a faltering Chinese economy yet to fully rebound after his strict pandemic controls were relaxed, with the property market in crisis and record youth unemployment.
The economic woes, combined with the unexplained removal of two hand-picked officials at the top of his government, have tarnished the image that Xi projected the last time he met Biden, when he’d just consolidated power and started a norm-shattering third term leading China.
Biden, meanwhile, finds himself strapped with international challenges from the war in Ukraine to the latest conflict in Gaza. Another global flashpoint involving China is the last thing he would want to see, especially as he vies for re-election next year.
“At a time that they both face domestic challenges and foreign policy challenges, there’s less incentive for them to try to go after each other and a bit more incentive for them to stabilize their relationship,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.