China’s Xi to attend online climate summit with Biden

Beijing and Washington have ‘committed to cooperating’ on tackling climate crisis even as tensions remain on multiple other fronts.

China’s President Xi Jinping will attend US President Joe Biden’s virtual climate summit this week, Beijing said on Wednesday, as the world’s most polluting nations seek rare common ground despite wider political tensions. Biden has invited 40 world leaders including Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to the meeting that starts on Earth Day on Thursday and is meant to mark Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against climate change after former president Donald Trump disengaged from the process. The virtual summit will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Biden became president.