BEIJING: President Xi Jinping will attend a virtual summit on climate change on Thursday at the invitation of his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced on Wednesday.
U.S. President has invited dozens of world leaders to join the two-day virtual summit starting on Thursday, after bringing the U.S. back into the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The U.S. is expected to announce “an ambitious 2030 emissions target as its new Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement” by the time of the summit, the White House earlier said in a statement.
China has pledged to have carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. The country also vows to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from the 2005 level by 2030.
Last week, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry traveled to Shanghai to meet his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, marking the first high-level visit to China by a Biden administration official. The two sides agreed to make concrete actions to implement Paris Agreement.
“Moving forward, China and the United States are firmly committed to working together and with other parties to strengthen implementation of the Paris Agreement,” read the last week’s statement. The statement was released after a meeting in Shanghai between Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy for climate change affairs, and John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate. The two sides are committed to pursuing efforts to hold the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is in accordance with Article 2 of the Agreement, according to the statement.
The two sides also expressed expectations for the upcoming virtual summit on climate change on April 22 and 23. The United States and China will continue to discuss, both on the road to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) and beyond, concrete actions in the 2020s to reduce emissions aimed at keeping the Paris Agreement-aligned temperature limit within reach, read the statement.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN
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