US Climate Envoy Kerry Gets Cold Shoulder in China

WASHINGTON - Analysts are portraying this week’s visit to China by U.S. presidential envoy John Kerry as a diplomatic embarrassment, with Chinese leaders giving no ground on Kerry’s appeal for cooperation on climate change and offering him only video meetings with senior officials.

“The Taliban got a better reception” when a delegation from the Afghan insurgent group met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on July 28, noted Anders Corr, a longtime China observer and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. The chilly treatment of Kerry reflects how much an increasingly assertive China’s approach to Washington has changed in just a few months. U.S. President Joe Biden’s appointment of Kerry, a former secretary of state and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a special envoy for climate issues was initially greeted in China as an opportunity in which to engage with a new U.S. administration. Under Biden’s predecessor, President Donald Trump, U.S. policies toward Beijing were seen by some as overly hawkish, and by others as rightfully assertive.