By: Jianli Yang & Aaron Rhodes – April 22, 2021
President Biden’s virtual Leadership Summit on Climate is meant to counteract what is considered damage to the nation’s environmental image by the Trump administration, and the exercise hopefully will have concrete results for reducing carbon emissions. But by providing China with its own public relations opportunity, the event may well be judged by history as emblematic of the process by which China neutralized not its carbon emissions, but opposition to its human rights atrocities and aggression.
Climate envoy John Kerry laid the groundwork for a U.S.-China rapprochement during his April 18 Shanghai visit, which resulted in a joint declaration to cooperate “to tackle the climate crisis … with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.” The summit will allow Chinese leader Xi Jinping to pose with Biden as a heroic global co-leader in the campaign to save the world from environmental catastrophe.
Xi apparently is happy to share the glory with Biden; it articulates with other efforts to offset negative impressions left by China’s illegal assault on democracy in Hong Kong, threats against Taiwan, and exploitation of… [Continue Reading]
Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/549351-for-china-a-summit-to-neutralize-criticism-not-carbon