John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua are seen as uniquely capable of getting the U.S. and China to cooperate on climate change. But when it comes to the world’s two biggest emitters, a rivalry might be just as useful.
Listen to SupChina editor-at-large and Sinica podcast host Kaiser Kuo read this article.
Xie Zhenhua was supposed to retire long ago, but every time the Chinese bureaucrat tried to leave government service, something blocked his exit. In 2015, he tried to step down as China’s lead climate negotiator before the Paris Climate Change Conference, but he was reinstated just a few months later. Given his impressive career helping shape China’s environmental policy, he was seen as crucial to reaching a deal. So, the pudgy, bespectacled Tianjin native went to work as China’s top climate official, and the relationship he cultivated with Todd Stern, the lead U.S. negotiator in Paris, played a key role in making the agreement a reality.
After Paris, Xie once again thought he was done. He took an academic gig running an environmental institute at his alma mater, Tsinghua University, hoping to influence climate policy from the sidelines. But Beijing pulled him back into the action.
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
Agribusiness giant Syngenta is unique on the world stage: it is a state-owned Chinese firm with an American CEO. After ChemChina's historic purchase of the company in 2017 — the largest ever purchase by a Chinese company overseas — Syngenta is now ready for its big China debut with a planned blockbuster IPO in Shanghai this fall. But while "modernizing" farming in China has been good for Syngenta's business, helping Beijing achieve its long-sought after goal of food self sufficiency will be more complicated feat.
The journalists and authors talk about what sets China's use of surveillance tech apart from other countries; how the building blocks of that tech came from the West; and how the surveillance state can be...
