Why China-California subnational climate cooperation stands as a model

The U.S. State of California, on the west coast of the country facing the Pacific Ocean, is no stranger to extreme weather.

The state experienced its driest three-year period from October 2019 to September 2022. Meanwhile, increasing wildfires have torched more than 38 million acres across the country, destroying thousands of homes and structures over the last five years.

Across the Pacific, China has been dealing with its fair share of the trouble. In the summer of 2022, China saw the worst drought since 1961 along the country's longest Yangtze River, forcing industries in the hydropower-dependent regions of the southwest to shut down to ensure electricity supplies for homes.

Both California and China's woes are partly attributed to or made worse by climate change, which unleashes a wide range of natural disasters as the planet warms.

Faced with the same enemy: global warming, the two sides have been engaging in numerous climate cooperation projects at subnational levels, and that cooperation has been hailed as an example for others to follow.

In an article published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, Fan Dai, director of California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, said that despite the differences between China and the United States and the ups and downs in their relationship, the cooperation between California and China shows that "effective climate action can happen below the national level."

The two sides' engagement can be traced back to 1998 and, over the years, has yielded a number of projects and initiatives between the California and Chinese ministries as well as provinces and cities.

Last year, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment signed a memorandum of understanding with California on emission cuts, climate change mitigation and clean energy promotion. 

California, a state that's leading in tackling environmental issues and mitigating climate change in the U.S., shared its experience and expertise to help China develop air pollution management practices in Beijing and emissions cap-and-trade pilot programs. At the same time, demonstration projects at Yancheng City in east China's Jiangsu Province have been viewed as a benchmark for the development of offshore wind projects along California's coast.

In an email, Dai told CGTN that the reason why cooperation between California and China stands out as a model is that "unlike the (U.S.) federal government, California's China policy and climate policy have been quite consistent" and that "there have been concrete results from the subnational cooperation."

According to Dai, there is huge potential for cooperation as the two sides can "push each other to do more and adopt more aggressive policies and demonstrate to the rest of the world what could be done at subnational levels and be replicated elsewhere for actions."

Such cooperation has also served as a bridge to help maintain links between the world's two largest economies at the national level, experts and officials said.

California governor Gavin Newsom paid a weeklong visit to China in late October, and a statement issued by his office after the trip highlighted the role his state plays in aiding the China-U.S. relationship.

"Because of California's history with China on climate cooperation, and our world-leading climate efforts, our state can serve as a bridge on one of the most consequential issues of our time," the statement said.

Tang Xinhua, an associate researcher with the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, said that despite emerging "uncertainties" in overall China-U.S. cooperation due to the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election, subnational engagement will help maintain contacts between the two sides and provide the foundation for the potential resumption of cooperation.

"Over the past few decades, China has risen to become the leading manufacturer and deployer of most of the key clean energy technologies that the world needs for the low-carbon transition – wind, solar and now batteries for electric vehicles," said Joanna Lewis, a climate expert at Georgetown University.

"No cooperation, particularly on the science and technology front, is ultimately detrimental to the U.S. and to the global innovation system," she said.

Prior to the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference, or COP28, which opened on Thursday in Dubai, the UAE, China's special envoy for climate change Xie Zhenhua and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry held talks in Sunnylands, California. In a joint statement released afterwards, the two countries agreed to revive a bilateral climate working group, back a new global renewables target and work together on methane and plastic pollution.

(Cover image via CFP, with input from China Daily)