WASINGTON, DC—US envoy John Kerry will travel to China on Sunday, the State Department said, as the world’s two biggest polluters work to restart talks on climate change.
The July 16-19 trip will be Kerry’s third since taking the special climate envoy position under President Joe Biden, and he will also become the third top administration official to head to the country in recent weeks.
Kerry will follow in the footsteps of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who last month paid the highest-ranking US visit to Beijing in nearly five years, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who was in China last week.
“Kerry aims to engage with the PRC on addressing the climate crisis, including with respect to increasing implementation and ambition and promoting a successful COP28,” the State Department said in a press release Tuesday, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
The United Arab Emirates will host the UN COP28 climate talks starting in November, with nearly 200 nations gathering to wrestle with how to mitigate global warming and its impacts.
Confirming Kerry’s visit, Beijing’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment said the two sides would “have an in-depth exchange of views on cooperation in tackling climate change.”
The United States and China are the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases as well as some of the world’s biggest investors in renewable energy.
Kerry, a former US secretary of state, has enjoyed comparatively cordial and consistent relations with China, with the Biden administration identifying climate as an area for potential cooperation despite tensions elsewhere.
But China last year briefly said it was suspending talks on climate in anger after Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the House of Representatives, defiantly visited Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing.