China, US to cooperate more on environmental issues: think tank
China and the US will cooperate more in reducing carbon emissions, despite the US decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in June, an expert on USChina relations and sustainable development said on Thursday.
After the Trump administration decided to leave the Paris climate deal, some US states and cities like California, Boston, Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania have shown their support for the deal, Kevin Mo, managing director of the Paulson Institute (PI) representative office in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday at the Fortune Global Forum.
The forum is being held in Guangzhou, capital of South China’s Guangdong Province from Wednesday to Friday.
Despite the message sent by US president Donald Trump in tackling global warming issues, many US companies have taken eco-friendly policies into their corporate strategies, Mo noted.
California and Chinese authorities signed an agreement in June to work on reducing emissions, according to an AP report. China, European countries and individual US states will fill the gap left by the US federal government’s move to abdicate leadership on this issue, California Governor Jerry Brown was quoted as saying in the report.
“We’d like to see more subnational cooperation in this aspect,” Mo said.
China and the US should work more in different sectors and look beyond one or two issues such as North Korea and rebalancing trade, Henry Paulson Jr, founder and chairman of PI, noted during a panel discussion at the forum on Wednesday.
He suggested that the two countries should focus more on issues such as creating jobs, tackling environmental problems and helping the US export more environmental products and services.
As China is carrying on economic restructuring that will focus more on sustainable development, the US think tank is seeking more opportunities in new urbanization projects in China, Mo said.
The PI signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement on Thursday with a Beijing-based think tank, the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, and the government of Guangzhou to develop a US-China sustainable urbanization pilot zone in the new Nansha district of the city, according to a statement the US think tank sent to the Global Times on Thursday.