The following is an excerpt from Taylah Bland's op-ed in The Diplomat. Taylah is a Schwarzman Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. 

After Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, U.S.-China climate conversations were frozen. This changed with U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry's recent visit to Beijing.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has maintained his stance that China will dictate its own pace for climate action. At the same time Kerry was speaking to officials in Beijing, Xi spoke at a conference on ecological and environmental protection, stating "the path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others."

The bottom line is simple: China’s domestic climate agenda is set and executed by China and China only. 

The readouts from both sides following Kerry's visit indicated a series of productive conversations, but the trip failed to deliver any solid outcomes. There was no joint statement, no commitment to resume the "Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s," and no progress was made on the methane or coal agendas. 

It appears that both countries, at this stage, are more inclined to continue progressing their own domestic climate agendas even as cooperation remains stalled. While dialogues are important to keep open lines of communication and signal to the international community the responsibility both countries have to advance the climate agenda, they fail to take actionable steps toward climate adaptation and mitigation. 

It’s promising, however, that each side is making progress domestically.

A Track Record of Domestic Headway

In 2022, the United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest piece of legislation dedicated to climate and energy in U.S. history. The act aims to drive uptake in the clean energy transition by offering tax credits and subsidies across wind, hydro, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy. 

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, meanwhile, reiterated the previously announced target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 and set a goal of seeing emissions peak in 2030. It also builds upon Beijing's existing advancement in the clean energy transition. China has also encouraged the judges of top courts to hear climate-related cases and weigh carbon impacts in their decisions to help the country achieve its emission reduction goals. 

Xi recently reinforced the need to accelerate the construction of a power system that is "green and low-carbon, secure and abundant, economically efficient, flexible, and intelligent in supply and demand coordination." In addition, China is on track to double its utility-scale solar and wind power capacity and shatter the central government's ambitious 2030 target of 1,200 gigawatts (GW) five years ahead of schedule. 

Read the full op-ed in The Diplomat.