--- title: What Blinken's China Visit Means for Global Climate Action description: The U.S. relationship with China will likely remain a balancing act on climate issues. But a thaw in relations is in everyone’s interest. canonical: https://time.com/6289049/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship/ author: Alejandro de la Garza article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-06-21T21:04:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T16:03:28.074Z article:section: Climate og:title: What Blinken's China Visit Means for Global Climate Action og:description: The U.S. relationship with China will likely remain a balancing act on climate issues. But a thaw in relations is in everyone’s interest. og:url: https://time.com/6289049/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte6f9682b1173736e/698a3e0f22fb85152be2eca0/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: CHINA-US-DIPLOMACY og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Blinken's China Visit Means for Global Climate Action twitter:description: The U.S. relationship with China will likely remain a balancing act on climate issues. But a thaw in relations is in everyone’s interest. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte6f9682b1173736e/698a3e0f22fb85152be2eca0/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Blinken's Visit to China Means for Global Climate Action > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=30c03c7d-8f05-4d96-8dd2-e0482ac6a5fc&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1)  by [Alejandro de la Garza](https://time.com/author/alejandro-de-la-garza/)  ## Alejandro de la Garza Jun 21, 2023 9:04 PM UTC  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang shake hands ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang shake hands ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023. LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP—Getty Images  by [Alejandro de la Garza](https://time.com/author/alejandro-de-la-garza/)  ## Alejandro de la Garza Jun 21, 2023 9:04 PM UTC U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China on Monday may have brought a glimmer of hope in the exceedingly gloomy outlook of the countries’ relations. It may also reopen the door to the two countries working more closely to address [climate change](https://time.com/section/climate/). Nothing of substance really got hashed out in the meetings between Blinken and top leadership in Beijing. The same old sticking points remain, among them China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, its increasingly robust surveillance efforts around the world, and its growing aggression toward Taiwan. (From the Chinese perspective, a lot of the problem comes down to the U.S. refusing to butt out of what the country’s leaders consider to be their business.) Mostly what emerged was a commitment for the two sides to keep talking, with the promise of more high-level exchanges in the months ahead. But for those hoping to see the world’s two largest emitters work together to fight climate change, it’s better than the alternative. In recent years, the two sides made progress together on the emissions front: cooperating in signing the 2015 Paris Accord, for instance, and more recently agreeing to a [sweeping deal](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/climate/climate-cop26-glasgow.html) on methane emissions and phasing out coal at the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Scotland. But the momentum came to a halt last August, when China [pulled out](https://time.com/6203022/nancy-pelosi-taiwan-visit-us-china-relations/) of climate talks with the U.S. in retaliation for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which China considers as a breakaway province. China subsequently resumed those talks, but things got icy again after February’s [spy balloon](https://time.com/6253974/chinese-balloon-worldwide-spy-operation/) incident, delaying Blinken’s visit to Beijing. Now, at last, it seems the standoff could start to ease. John Kerry, the top U.S. climate negotiator, has been invited to China (no date has been set yet). “We have to create a partnership here,” Kerry told [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/china-us-climate-partnership-vital-despite-differences-kerry-says-2023-06-19/). Some of the issues to be worked out have global consequences, like resolving whether China should pay into a climate disaster fund for developing nations, or whether it can continue to identify as a developing nation itself. Dialogue between the two nations also sends an important signal to other countries that cited lack of cooperation between the world’s largest emitters as reason to put off their own climate commitments. Still, even climate hawks might have reason for not wanting relations with China to become too friendly, at least from an economic standpoint. The U.S may have the [military advantage](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/08/12/in-think-tanks-taiwan-war-game-us-beats-china-at-high-cost/) over China, but when it comes to green industry China holds most of the cards. China leads the world in battery production, and in solar panels. It also controls the market for other essential elements of the green transition, like electrical transformers needed to remake the grid and plug in new green energy projects as they come online. Obviously, that situation puts the U.S. at a disadvantage. An over-reliance on China for green energy infrastructure could cripple the U.S. if relations spiral, just as European nations were sent scrambling when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put European gas supplies in jeopardy. It also gives ammunition to the [mostly conservative U.S. lawmakers](https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2023/2/barrasso-china-benefits-from-biden-s-war-on-american-energy) who claim that any moves away from fossil fuels means sacrificing America’s strategic interests. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is a first step toward building up the country’s own green energy production base, with incentives designed to encourage firms to build solar panels and EVs on U.S. soil. But building that manufacturing capacity will take years that the climate doesn’t have, which means we’ll have to rely on a lot of Chinese hardware for the time being. And China has such a leg up on the U.S. in green manufacturing that firms in the U.S. often need the help of Chinese companies to set up their own production, as in the case of [Ford’s new battery plant](https://time.com/6256132/ford-ev-china-clean-technology/) in Michigan, which is reliant on know-how from Chinese battery giant CATL. The upshot is that the U.S. relationship with China will likely remain a delicate balancing act on climate issues. A thaw is in everyone’s interest—for trade, for climate diplomacy, for exchanging technology and investment that could help both economies to decarbonize faster. Closer is better. Just not too close. **_A version of this story also appears in the_** **Climate is Everything** **_newsletter. To sign up,_** [**_click here_**](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletters/?newsletter%5Fname=climate&source=onsite)**_._** ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6289049/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6289049/blinken-us-china-climate-relationship/"},"headline":"What Blinken's Visit to China Means for Global Climate Action","datePublished":"2023-06-21T21:04:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T16:03:28.074Z","description":"The U.S. relationship with China will likely remain a balancing act on climate issues. 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