SEOUL, South Korea -- The United States and China have said they will fight climate change "with the seriousness and urgency that it demands" by stepping up efforts to reduce carbon emissions, a rare demonstration of cooperation amid escalating tensions over a raft of other issues.
The agreement, which included few specific commitments, was announced Saturday night after President Joe Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, visited China for three days of talks in which the negotiators managed not to be sidetracked by other disputes.
"It's very important for us to try to keep those other things away because climate is a life-or-death issue in so many different parts of the world," Kerry said in an interview Sunday morning in Seoul, where he met with South Korean officials to discuss global warming. "What we need to do is prove we can actually get together, sit down and work on some things constructively."
He added that the language in the statement is "strong" and that the two countries agreed on "critical elements on where we have to go." But the former secretary of state said, "I learned in diplomacy that you don't put your back on the words, you put on actions. We all need to see what happens."
The agreement comes only days before Biden is scheduled to hold a virtual climate summit with world leaders, hoping to prod countries to do more to reduce emissions and limit planetary warming to 34.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. Many scientists now argue that warming must be kept below that threshold to avert catastrophic disruptions to life on the planet.
The U.S. and China pump out nearly half of the fossil fuel fumes that are warming the planet's atmosphere, so their cooperation is key to the success of global efforts to curb climate change, but frayed ties over human rights, trade and China's territorial claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea have been threatening to undermine such efforts.
China's leader, Xi Jinping, is among those who have been invited to the virtual summit. While he has yet to publicly accept the invitation, the agreement with Washington appeared to make his participation more likely.
Saturday's statement said the two countries "look forward to" the summit. Kerry said Sunday that "we very much hope that [Xi] will take part," but it's up to China to make that decision.
On Friday, Xi said China remained committed to the climate goals he announced last fall, including a promise that its carbon emissions would peak before 2030. At the same time, Xi suggested that the world's most advanced nations had a responsibility to take the lead in making deeper cuts.
In what seemed to be a retort to the United States, he warned that the climate issue should not be "a bargaining chip for geopolitics" or "an excuse for trade barriers."
"This is undoubtedly a tough battle," Xi said in a conference call with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, according to an account of the meeting issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
"China is sure to act on its words, and its actions are sure to produce results," he went on. "We hope that the advanced economies will set an example in momentum for emissions reductions and also lead the way in fulfilling commitments for climate funding."
The White House has signaled that Biden will announce more ambitious plans for reducing emissions domestically, after four years in which his predecessor, Donald Trump, disparaged the issue.
"We've seen commitments before where everybody falls short," Kerry said. "I mean, frankly, we're all falling short. The entire world right now is falling short. This is not a finger-pointing exercise of one nation alone."
DISPUTES SIDESTEPPED
Kerry met in Shanghai with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, over three days in talks that at one point went late into the night. Kerry said they stayed focused on climate change and did not touch on increasingly rancorous disputes over issues like China's political crackdown in Hong Kong and its threats toward Taiwan.
Su Wei, a member of the Chinese negotiation team, told state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday that a major accomplishment was "restarting the dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States on climate change issues." Su said the two countries reached a consensus on key areas for future cooperation.
Yet on Friday, even as the two envoys met, the State Department sharply criticized prison sentences handed down in Hong Kong to prominent pro-democracy leaders, including Jimmy Lai, a 72-year-old newspaper tycoon. On the same day, China warned the United States and Japan against "collusion" as Biden met at the White House with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, with China's rising ambitions one of the major issues on the table.
Chinese officials and the state news media noted Kerry's visit but markedly played it down, focusing instead on Xi's meetings. But in the joint statement with the United States, the Chinese government pledged to do more on climate, although without detailing any specific steps.
The statement said both countries would develop "long-term strategies" to reach carbon neutrality -- the point when a country emits no more carbon than it removes from the atmosphere -- before the next international climate conference in November in Glasgow, Scotland.
In a joint statement after the White House meetings between Biden and Suga, the United States and Japan said they intended to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 by promoting renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and storage, and through innovations in capturing and recycling carbon from the atmosphere.
Xi pledged last year that China would reach carbon neutrality by 2060 and that its emissions would peak before 2030.
HARMONY NOT COMPLETE
Despite Biden's renewed focus on global warming after Trump's term, Chinese officials have in recent weeks chided the United States for demanding that other countries do more.
They noted that Trump had pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which most countries committed to targets for reducing emissions. Biden had the United States rejoin the historic climate accord in the first hours of his presidency.
China has since presented itself as the more responsible leader on the issue, even though it is now the world's worst emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for 28% of the world's total. The United States is second at 15%.
Noting that China is the world's biggest coal user, Kerry said he and Chinese officials had a lot of discussions on how to accelerate a global energy transition.
Kerry said China was effectively pledging to move more quickly than Xi initially promised by "taking enhanced climate actions that raise ambition in the 2020s," as the statement put it. The two countries will continue to meet to discuss the issue, Kerry added.
China's new five-year economic plan, unveiled in March, offered few new specifics for reaching Xi's stated emissions goals, raising concerns that they might be more aspirational than actual. China has continued, for example, to approve new coal plants, prioritizing social stability and the development of an important domestic industry.
"For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered," Le Yucheng, the vice minister of foreign affairs, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "Some counties are asking China to do more on climate change. I'm afraid that is not very realistic."
Information for this article was contributed by Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times; and by Hyung-Jin Kim, Ken Moritsugu and Huizhong Wu of The Associated Press.