For more insight into President Xi's environmental policy, Global Watch spoke to Josef Gregory Mahoney, a Professor of Politics at East China Normal University. We asked him to contrast the approaches of China and the U.S.

He said: "I've lived in China for many years. And we've seen a lot of accomplishments under President Xi's administration. Three of my favorites are poverty alleviation, the COVID-19 containment, and recovery efforts, and above all, living in Shanghai, and having lived in Beijing, the incredible progress that we've seen on the environmental front. Conversely, in each of these three areas, and very notably and notoriously, the United States record has been abysmal. Its abandonment of the Paris agreements is really a sort of striking thing to pick on."