Interview: China's commitments on climate change "hugely significant": U.S. expert

Panorama taken with a drone on Aug. 8, 2020 shows a sunrise view of Jianghang Village in Zhangpu Town, Kunshan City, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/Yang Lei)

"They have helped inject energy and vitality back to global climate change talks, with other countries -- mostly in East Asia -- also following in China's wake and laying out ambitious climate change targets," said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies.

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Xinhua) -- China's aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 are hugely significant commitments and deserve to be commended, a renowned U.S. expert has said.

"They have helped inject energy and vitality back to global climate change talks, with other countries -- mostly in East Asia -- also following in China's wake and laying out ambitious climate change targets," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

As a large developing country, meeting these steep targets will be "an arduous task" for China, Gupta said. "But seen through the lens of incentivizing and mainstreaming 'green' technologies within our everyday lives, it can also be seen as a huge commercial opportunity."

Going forward, the need now is to incentivize the switching to cleaner technologies and industrial processes in the short and medium term, Gupta said.

"Long-term targets are good, but one can only get there through a series of incremental -- and incrementally more ambitious -- steps which must begin right away," he said.

Aerial photo taken on Aug. 19, 2020 shows wind turbines in Jiucaiping scenic spot in southwest China's Guizhou Province. (Xinhua/Liu Xu)

China's national carbon emission rights trading scheme, which is due to be launched in July, is an important step in this direction, the expert said.

On Sunday, the United States and China issued a joint statement after talks between China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in the Chinese city of Shanghai.

The statement, which contains commitments from China and the United States to cooperate and to strengthen implementation of the Paris Agreement, also said both countries look forward to the U.S.-hosted Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22.

At the invitation of U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend and deliver an important speech at the Leaders Summit on Climate in Beijing through videolink, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced on Wednesday.

The U.S.-China cooperation on climate change and its memorializing in the recent joint statement is "a refreshing breath of fresh air," said Gupta.

By cooperating and leading together, the United States and China, along with the European Union, "set a good example of political will to their peers that a pressing global challenge can be tackled, and that the North-South divide in the process of doing so can also be bridged," said Gupta.

"Just as importantly, their cooperation on climate change shows that both the United States and China can rise above their differences and cooperate together in the better interests of all," he said.