Will the China – United States standoff derail COP26?

Are the extreme diplomatic tensions between the United States and China likely to derail this decisive summit in Glasgow? This is all the worry before COP26. Because the two superpowers together represent more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions and no breakthrough is possible in the climate crisis without determined action on their part. An agreement in Scotland between Beijing and Washington would give a real boost to a historic international agreement. But their icy relationship isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, experts say, as their fierce competition can also spur the fight against warming.

If they “can’t agree on something substantial, I don’t think that will prevent serious action from being taken, as both countries can and want to do a lot on their own,” says Mary Nichols , who has led major climate initiatives in the state of California. “But that does not mean that it would be without effect,” adds this researcher at Columbia University in New York. “Without an explicit ‘US-Chinese deal,’ the risk is that other countries will be reluctant to act.” Upon his arrival at the White House in January, United States President Joe Biden defined two major foreign policy priorities: countering the rise of Chinese power and resolving the climate crisis.

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The climate to reconcile them?

To reconcile these objectives, he established a diplomacy on two parallel tracks with regard to Beijing, which provides for cooperation on the climate and “strategic competition” in the scent of the Cold War over everything else: human rights, fate of Taiwan, trade. … “It is no mystery that China and the United States have a lot of differences. But on the climate, cooperation is the only way to escape the collective suicide towards which the world is heading,” a recently launched the American envoy for these climate negotiations, John Kerry.

The latter visited China twice, in particular to try to convince the Communist authorities to turn the page on coal-fired power stations. But Foreign Minister Wang Yi replied that he considered “impossible to place Sino-US climate cooperation above the general climate of Sino-US relations.” The risk, seen from Washington, is that Beijing will use climate blackmail to obtain concessions on other more thorny subjects.

The Americans thus claim to have warned the Chinese during a meeting last week in Switzerland that any commitments on their part would not be a “favor” giving the right to compensation. The dialogue is not broken. Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example, made a noticeable gesture by announcing in September the end of his country’s funding of coal-fired power plants abroad.

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“Everything to gain in terms of international reputation”

Alex Wang, of the University of California at Los Angeles, believes that competition on the world stage between the two rival powers can lead to a form of “healthy competition” on environmental issues. Especially since everyone has “good reasons to make progress”, he explains. China, in particular, “has everything to gain in terms of international reputation by being seen as a good student on the climate”, and “if the Chinese leaders feel they are lagging behind, it can put pressure on them. to do more, ”he adds. In this regard, the election of Joe Biden has changed the situation by clearly increasing this pressure.

The Democratic president has indeed taken the opposite view of his predecessor Donald Trump, who had left the Paris climate agreement and defended coal tooth and nail. From now on, Washington wants to again be the spearhead of the fight against warming and plans to invest unprecedented sums for this. A multilateral process like that of COP26, under the auspices of the UN, can also be a way of bypassing the Sino-American face-to-face, argues Jacob Stokes, of the think tank Center for a New American Security.

“Neither side wants people to think they are acting to please the other side,” he said. In addition, US leaders may instead focus on diplomatic efforts with poorer countries, he said. “Is it more important to scramble for concessions from Beijing, or to try to finance clean energy in the rest of the developing countries which still need a lot of energy to develop?”

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