CHINA and the United States yesterday issued a joint statement on climate change to strengthen cooperation in tackling the global challenge, it was announced after Chinese and U.S. presidents held talks in Beijing yesterday.

    “We agreed to make sure that international climate change negotiations will reach an agreement in Paris,” President Xi Jinping said.

    U.S. President Barack Obama said the joint announcement on the two countries’ emissions targets was a “historic agreement” and a “major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship.”

    “We have a special responsibility to lead the worldwide effort against climate change,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Xi. “We hope to encourage all economies to be more ambitious,” he added.

    China and the United States, which together produce around 45 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, will be key to ensuring a global deal on reducing emissions after 2020 is reached next year.

    The United States set a new target to reduce its emissions of heat-trapping gases by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. That’s a sharp increase from earlier in Obama’s presidency, when he pledged to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

    China didn’t commit to cut emissions by a specific amount. Rather, Xi set a target for China’s emissions to peak by 2030, or earlier if possible. He also pledged to increase the share of energy that China will derive from sources other than fossil fuels.

    Meanwhile, Obama told Xi that the United States has no intention of containing China because doing that is not in its own interests and has no role in Central Occupy protests in Hong Kong.

    “These are issues ultimately for the people of Hong Kong and China to decide,” Obama said.

    (SD-Xinhua)