Chinese Premier Li Qiang is in France for an official visit and to attend the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. On Thursday, in a meeting with French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, Li noted that China stands ready to step up cooperation with France on global issues such as climate change.

Climate change has been a major challenge facing the world, and tackling climate change is a priority of global sustainable development and one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Together with other global challenges, climate change has become an indispensable key topic in the dialogues between China and France.

The two countries have established a partnership for tackling climate change and achieved important results in their cooperation under the framework of the China-France comprehensive strategic partnership, according to China's Xinhua News Agency.

Here is a guide to China-France cooperation on climate change.

In November 2007, China and France signed a joint statement on responding to climate change.

In 2015, the landmark agreement – the Paris Agreement – was adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It sets long-term global goals, which include the objective "to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees."

In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a joint statement reaffirming their strong support for the "irreversible" Paris Agreement on climate change, from which the U.S. announced its exit earlier.

In April 2023, during Macron's visit to China, the two sides reiterated their commitment to the global challenge and expressed wish for further communication and cooperation.

The two countries have a similar climate agenda, as they have both committed to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions.

China aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, while France has set the neutrality target for 2050.

In the joint statement issued during Macron's visit to China earlier this year, the word "climate" appeared nine times and "carbon neutrality" four times, reflecting the two countries' common interests and shared resolve.

In a recent interview with Xinhua News Agency, French international affairs expert Bruno Guigue expected that France and China could deepen cooperation to tackle global challenges. "China and France have nothing to lose and everything to gain by working together," Guigue noted, adding that the two countries can play a leading role in the multilateral policy in favor of energy transition.

Du Xiangwan, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, noted in an earlier interview with the Chinese newspaper People's Daily that the two sides share a wide scope of cooperation that has a bright prospect, especially in the energy sector.

"One of the biggest lessons from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is to hold energy in your own hands. If Europe wants to realize energy independence, it has to develop renewable energy – a goal that is shared by China. Despite their different energy structures, the dynamic for cooperation in renewable energy is unprecedented under the targets of energy independence and carbon neutrality."

(Cover images via VCG, with input from Xinhua)

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