US Climate Envoy Kerry Gets Cold Shoulder in China
Voice of America
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.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.