[ad_1]
FILE – In this September 2, 2021 file photo provided by the US State Department, the President’s Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry attends a meeting with Yang Jiechi, director of the Commission’s Chinese office Central Foreign Affairs Office, via a video link in Tianjin, China. Kerry has come to China to put pressure on the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases to do more in the global effort to contain the rising temperature. What he got were renewed demands that Washington change its stance towards China on a host of other issues, from human rights to Taiwan. (US Department of State via AP, file)
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press
U.S. Envoy John Kerry’s diplomatic quest to avoid the worst global warming scenarios is met with resistance from China, the world’s biggest climate polluter, who insists the United States facilitate confrontation over others. questions if they want Beijing to step up its climate efforts.
Republican advocates and lawmakers say they see signs, including softer language and talk of a heated internal debate among officials in the Biden administration, that pressure from China is leading the United States to back down on criticism of the mass detentions, forced sterilization and other abuses of its Uyghur Muslim Minorities in the Xinjiang region.
But the White House took a step last week that could further deepen the U.S.-China divide, forming a security alliance with Britain and Australia that will mean greater sharing of defense capabilities, including helping Australia to equip Australia with nuclear powered submarines.
President Joe Biden came out strong from the start of his presidency with sanctions against China’s abuses against Uyghurs, and his administration this spring called it genocide. But the United States’ desire for rapid climate progress versus China’s desire for the United States to back down on issues such as human rights and religious freedom creates a conflict between two of Biden’s major goals. : move the world away from the climatic abyss and temper the growing influence of China.
It would be “disastrous in the long run for the United States government to back down, to moderate itself, to let the Chinese handle the problem,” said Nury Turkel, a Uyghur advocate and vice chairman of the United States Commission on Human Rights. International Religious Freedom, a panel advisory body that makes policy recommendations to the White House and Congress.
Chinese leaders have repeatedly linked the issue of climate change and their complaints about the perceived US confrontation over human rights and other issues during Kerry’s last trip to China this month, Kerry told the journalists on a call.
The Chinese have complained specifically about the administration’s sanctions on China’s globally dominant solar panel industry, which the United States and rights groups say is based in part on labor. forced Uyghurs imprisoned.
My response to them was, ‘Hey listen, the climate isn’t ideological, it’s not partisan, it’s not a weapon or a geostrategic tool, and it sure isn’t, you know. , day-to-day politics, “Kerry said. He told reporters on a post-talks call that he could only pass China’s sanctions complaints on to Biden and the Secretary of State. State Antony Blinken.
In 2019, China pumped out 27% of the climate-eroding fossil fuel fumes, more than the rest of the developed world combined. The United States is the second largest offender, with 11%.
This puts China at the heart of global hopes to reduce the fumes from the use of oil and coal before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible.
Kerry, former secretary of state and Biden’s global climate envoy, led repeated appeals, online meetings and visits to Chinese officials ahead of the November UN climate summit in Scotland. He urged the Chinese to speed up steps such as reducing their construction, financing and using dirty-burning coal-fired power plants.
He and others see this summit as a last chance to dramatically cut emissions on time. Climate efforts will also be a theme for leaders at the United Nations General Assembly next week.
China under President Xi Jinping has said it will peak in climate pollution by the end of this decade, then make China climate pollution neutral by 2060, a decade later than the United States. United and other countries did not promise.
As China asserts its economic influence and territorial claims, and tension and competition increase with the United States, Xi and his officials have shown no desire to be seen as following the American line on climate or anything else.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the US diplomat during a video conference during Kerry’s last trip to China that “Sino-US cooperation on climate change cannot be divorced from the overall situation of Sino-relations. American “.
The United States should “take positive steps to get China-US relations back on track,” Wang added, according to a foreign ministry statement.
“The Chinese think the United States needs China’s cooperation more than China needs the United States,” and as others see the United States as weaker now than in the past, said Bonnie Glaser, an expert on security issues in Asia and Asia at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The United States’ global climate goals in this context are another “leverage point, and they are trying to use it to get the United States to abandon certain policies it finds particularly reprehensible”, including American pressure. on human rights, Glaser said.
Kerry said no country was as committed to human rights as the United States, and her climate talks with Chinese leaders had been constructive.
But China’s pressure on the human rights and climate front is said to be having effects.
A story circulating in Chinese political and human rights circles in Washington claimed that Kerry had a heated debate with other administration officials on the issue before her last trip to China. Some are claiming the administration’s influence in a bipartisan Uyghur forced labor bill that has stalled in the House after being easily passed by the Senate.
The State Department declined to comment on the two cases.
Uyghurs and human rights activists say they believe administration officials are softening their tone on social media and other public comments on China and human rights.
They point to a White House statement on a call between Xi and Biden on September 9 that made no mention of human rights.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the United States continues to try to make progress in areas of shared interest and mutual disputes with China.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who, along with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Is the lead author of the Uyghur Forced Labor Bill, said in a statement that “the unique focus of officials in the he climate administration led them to downplay the genocide in Xinjiang.
People “who are working to end the genocide are horrified by what we are seeing” in the administration, said Julie Millsap of the advocacy group Campaign for Uyghurs. No one knowing China would expect a “one-off dialogue using human rights issues as leverage for climate change to work,” she said.
The stalemate is distressing for climate advocates.
Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group, hesitated when asked about it. She wouldn’t trade human rights for emission reductions, she said, but “there is a way to do both.”
When asked how, Clarkson replied, “I’m not telling John Kerry how to do his job. But of course, it’s important that we hang on to the fundamentals.
___
Associated Press editors Seth Borenstein and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link