Can the U.S. and China work together? Don’t look to climate change action for answers.

Most experts had low expectations for Monday’s talks. While U.S.-China relations nosedived under the aggressive foreign policy of President Donald Trump, they have remained frosty under the Biden administration. Many now place much of the blame on Xi, who is widely expected to rule until at least 2027, if not longer.

There is one issue on which the United States and China have recently pledged to work together, offering a bright light for those concerned about the future of multilateralism: Climate change. But the early results from COP26, a United Nations climate summit that concluded this weekend in Glasgow, Scotland, suggest mixed lessons on the ability of Washington and Beijing to work together as partners on global issues.

On Wednesday, the two nations made the surprise announcement that the United States and China would work together to slow global warming and ensure that the climate talks produced meaningful results. It was a potentially major move for two countries that are the top greenhouse gas emitting nations, together producing roughly 40 percent of global emissions in 2019, according to one recent study.

“The United States and China have no shortage of differences,” U.S. special climate envoy John F. Kerry said in announcing the agreement. “But on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.” Kerry, a former secretary of state, has been a key advocate for improving relations with China with a goal of ensuring cooperation on big issues like climate change, according to reporting from my colleagues.

Though not perfect, and light on specific commitments, the agreement drew cautious optimism. “It could have been so much worse,” wrote Sam Geall, chief executive of nonprofit organization China Dialogue, in the Guardian on Friday. But just days after the U.S.-China agreement was announced, the final text of the COP26 agreement was released. While the two powers had made a show of working together, the final document may have shown the limits of this cooperation.

The Glasgow Climate Pact was the first U.N. climate deal to explicitly mention the need to move away from coal power, but the language had been watered down at the last minute under pressure from several top fossil fuel-producing countries. An initial aim to “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel” had been changed to “phase-down unabated coal,” rather than “phase out.”

China, along with India, was a key driver of that change. It came as a rude awakening for many and “shocked most delegates and riled the U.S. delegation,” a senior Biden administration official later told The Washington Post — though some accounts suggested the United States acquiesced to the weaker language. Alok Sharma, the British minister of state and president of the Glasgow summit, appeared upset by the changes. “We’re all well aware that, collectively, our climate ambition and action to date have fallen short on the promises made in Paris,” Sharma said Saturday, adding that China and India should “explain themselves.”

As China bureau chief Lily Kuo reports, China’s pushback on coal came as new domestic statistics revealed it produced 357 million tons of coal in October — a level not seen in six years and an indication of the effects of an energy crisis currently engulfing the country and putting the broader economy at risk. And while the country has promised to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, domestic concerns may trump international promises.

“Before calling on all countries to end their use of coal, the energy needs and shortfalls of these countries must be considered,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday, according to the state-run Global Times. China consumed 56 percent the world’s coal in 2020 — a habit that not only contributes greatly to its enormous greenhouse gas emissions, roughly a quarter of the world’s total, but one that could take a long time to kick.

“I think the current energy crunch in China also makes it very hard for China to consider any stronger pledge on phasing out coal,” Yan Qin, a research associate at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told The Post.

During Trump’s “America First” era, China portrayed itself as a champion of the global order. In an appearance in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum in January 2017, Xi gave a speech on the Chinese economy and offered a defense of the international order. Two years later, Vice President Wang Qishan jabbed at the Trump administration with remarks about countries “looking inward when making policies.”

But now the United States has a new leader — and it’s Xi who is stuck at home. Though the Chinese leader’s isolation has been justified by an ambitious aim of “covid zero,” it coincides with a domestic agenda based on increased repression and provocative, unilateral foreign policy moves. “China today is in the grip of the most concerted government campaign to assert greater control over society in decades, perhaps since the tumultuous days of Mao Zedong,” Michael Schuman, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, wrote for the Atlantic this week.

Some in the Biden administration hoped that climate could be a bridge. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Biden and Xi had “encouraged their delegates to find common ground ahead of a virtual summit, according to people familiar with the negotiation.” For those concerned about Chinese aggression toward Taiwan or its takeover of Hong Kong, there were already concerns that climate issues gave China too much leverage.

“China’s history of environmental action is one of many words and little action,” Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, wrote for the Hill newspaper this weekend, adding that Beijing “is well aware that its empty climate promises allow politicians in the U.S. to claim victory in the media.” The limited progress after COP26 may reinforce that view.

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