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China and the United States agree that climate change is a crisis that triggers worsening droughts and storms across the planet. Yet rising tensions over trade, security and human rights threaten to eclipse efforts between the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas pollutants to stop global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels.

United States climate ambassador John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, are discussing these steps in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin this week, seeking common ground ahead of international talks in Glasgow in November. Leaders from nearly 200 countries will seek to agree on intense efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and money to help the poorest nations prepare for the effects of global warming.

Hopes for a breakthrough in Glasgow largely depend on whether China and the US can gain momentum. On Wednesday, however, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, warned Mr. Kerry that US hostility on other fronts could hinder climate cooperation.

Mr. Wang told Mr. Kerry, “The United States must stop seeing China as a threat and an enemy.” According to the Chinese foreign ministry. He said working on climate change between the two countries is “not possible to get a divorce” from other looming geopolitical tensions.

“The US side hopes that climate cooperation can become an ‘oasis’ in Sino-US relations, but if this ‘oasis’ is surrounded by desert, sooner or later it will become a desert,” Wang said.

Mr. Kerry told Mr. Wang in an emailed statement from the State Department that the United States “remains its determination to cooperate with the world to overcome the climate crisis and it must be handled with the seriousness and urgency that it requires.”

The talks, which will continue until Friday, reflect the dangerous role that global warming has begun to play between the Biden administration and China’s powerful nationalist leader Xi Jinping. Climate change may encourage the two countries to cooperate in developing emission-reducing technology, but this is also a point of contention.

Relations between Beijing and Washington have become hostile. China’s treatment of Muslim minorities, her abolition of human rights in Hong Kong and the USA support to Taiwan.

Still, it was unclear whether Mr. Wang’s vicious statements were shadow boxing to reflect China’s future. muscular image or it was a harbinger of real change in climate talks. When Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman held talks in Tianjin in July, Mr. Wang and another Chinese diplomat he also publicly scolded her About the Biden administration’s China policies.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Xie described global warming as a threat that requires all countries to work together. Signs of climate deterioration this year – severe flooding in china and Europedroughts and fires western United Stateshigh rainfall ice sheet in Greenland – they underlined what was at stake.

Administration officials said Mr. Kerry and Mr. Xie had held about 18 meetings since the beginning of the Biden administration, a sign that both were determined to strike a deal. Mr. Kerry, 77, and Mr. Xie, 71, retired from government after Mr. Biden took office.

“Kerry and Xie have managed to create a channel for ongoing communication on climate change, which is extremely valuable right now.” Joanna I LewisAn associate professor at Georgetown University who studies Chinese climate policy, Dr. “Yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to completely isolate climate change from broader tensions.”

Tensions over climate action go back two decades, even before China Passed the USA in 2006 as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. The latest friction centers on calls from the Biden administration and other governments to China to phase out coal use at home and end its overseas financing of coal energy.

The United States and other countries are also pressing China to agree to try to limit global warming this century to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above the pre-industrial average. This target will require nations to make steeper and more urgent cuts than agreed under the agreement. Reached in Paris in 2015says countries should work to keep temperature rises “well below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees.”

A United Nations panel to evaluate climate science concluded in 2018 A new overview of science was published last month that catastrophic rises in sea levels and weather disasters will be inevitable if temperatures rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius. strengthened this warning.

China’s leader, Mr. Xi, declaration last year that China’s emissions would peak before 2030, and by 2060 the country’s achieve carbon neutrality — not releasing more carbon dioxide into the air than it removes through new technologies and growing forests.

However, keeping the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees will be nearly impossible unless China stops its increase in emissions and achieves carbon neutrality by 2050, if not immediately, in the next few years. The next three biggest emitters came together: the United States, the European Union, and India.

China’s latest five-year development plan, released in March, stated that the government may allow the consumption of coal, which is the main source of emissions. grow for more yearsbalances the country’s rapid advances in solar and wind energy.

“Kerry and his team are fully focused on this decade to keep 1.5 alive,” said Todd Stern, who served as a US climate ambassador under former President Barack Obama. This means that China cannot delay stopping its emissions growth, he said, adding: “If you don’t make a big move right now, you can’t get there.”

Prior to Glasgow, Mr. Kerry also asked China to restrict the construction of coal power plants abroad, and China may be more open to this step. Some countries, such as Vietnam and Pakistan, which turn to China for their coal plants, withdrawal from projects.

Mr. Xie pushed back pressure from Washington on a new temperature target. The current ceiling was accepted only after intense negotiations and Mr. Xie said in a recent speech: This meant that re-addressing the issue would prevent governments from taking action.

China has its own doubts about America’s determination. The memory of former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement is still fresh.

When President Biden took office, he returned to the agreement and pledged that the United States would reduce emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Still, the US is not quite on track to meet its current target of reducing emissions by as much as 28. percent by 2025. serious political obstacles In Congress – a fact that does not disappear for Chinese leaders.

“When the US pushes for 1.5, it’s hard not to be cynical,” said Li Shuo, a Chinese analyst at Greenpeace. He said China would announce the new measures, but likely not during Kerry’s visit so that the leaders were not seen as yielding to pressure.

“If you understand our political system, the controversial nature of bilateral relations, that would be political suicide,” he said.

Liu Yi contributed to the research.