US, China expected to join climate deal during Obama visit

The Chinese official media has been saying that the focus of the G20 summit will serve as a vital platform for reversing the trend of trade protectionism and giving new impetus to global trade growth.

At a ceremony on the sidelines of a global economic summit, Obama and Xi, representing the world’s two biggest carbon emitters, delivered documents to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. A young girl presented Obama with flowers and he shook hands with officials before entering his motorcade.

But the welcome ceremony didn’t go entirely smoothly.

The visit got off to a rocky start when a Chinese government official angrily scuffled with Obama’s top national security adviser, Susan Rice, at the airport, and yelled at a press aide.

Obama and Xi will begin the president’s trip by spending most of Saturday together. Fewer than half of the requisite 55 countries will have joined, but many others have signaled they plan to join in 2016, and the White House has been hopeful the deal can take force before year’s end.

The White House has attributed the accelerated pace to an unlikely partnership between Washington and Beijing.

The meeting of the minds on climate change, however, hasn’t smoothed the path for other areas of tension.

But even if enough other players step forward to make the Paris deal law, huge challenges lie ahead. Most recently, the US has urged China to accept an worldwide arbitration panel’s ruling that sided with the Philippines in a dispute over claims in the South China Sea.

Before leaving for Asia, Obama told CNN he planned to urge Xi to practice restraint.

“China will continue to firmly safeguard its sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea”, Xi said according to a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.

China views the South China Sea as an integral part of its national territory. The U.S. doesn’t take positions in the various disputes between China and its Asian neighbors, but is concerned about freedom of navigation and wants conflicts resolved peacefully and lawfully.

But he says leadership by the USA and China has been one of the biggest drivers of action on the issue, which Obama has highlighted during his presidency. The results have been mixed.

“Still, as it’s less expansive than organizations like the United Nations, the costs for negotiation and coordination can be significantly cut by a dialogue between the most representative countries in the world”, said Zheng, who is also a senior research fellow at the Pangoal Institution, a Beijing-based public policy research think tank.

China previously committed to its emissions peaking “around 2030”, a declaration made on an earlier visit by Mr Obama, when he announced a target for the United States to cut its own emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.

Neither of those requirements implies a commitment to cut absolute levels of emissions, although China is also obliged to have them peak by 2030.

Despite the political differences, emerging economies – India and China – are trying to work out more closer cooperation to oppose protectionism from the developed countries, increasing globalisation and expansion of global trade through structural reforms to create more jobs for their massive populations. And the countries that join must account for at least 55 percent of the world’s emissions.

China is responsible for just over 20 percent of global emissions while the United States covers another 17.9 percent. “But really China is committed to fulfilling its goals under the Paris agreement regardless of what happens in the USA or any other country”.

Xi said he acted after China’s legislature voted Saturday to formally enter the agreement. In the US, no Senate ratification is required because it is not considered a formal treaty. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to cancel the agreement.

Obama initially planned to use major new regulations on coal-fired power plants to make up the US contribution to the deal, but courts have put those regulations indefinitely on hold. The leaders also had a “candid exchange” over the arbitration case between China and the Philippines, the White House said.

Both were key to getting an agreement in Paris past year.

President Barack Obama is expected to meet later Saturday with his Chinese host, President Xi Jinping.

His next stop will be Laos, the first visit by a sitting president.