What California’s climate diplomacy with China achieves

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently completed trip to China symbolized the way diplomacy at the subnational level – involving regional, state, or local governments – ​can be a path to climate progress.

Some analysts see a bit of political theater, too, for a politician viewed as having presidential aspirations. ​But the trip resulted in a number of climate announcements, including an updated agreement to work aggressively toward carbon neutrality.

This California relationship with counterparts in China has evolved over many years into an example of how steady gains can come as governments find common ground for actions, from trading knowledge to making pledges on shared ambitions.

“Some of the geopolitics that puts stress on the U.S.-China relationship can be put to one side when California and China work together on climate policy and climate technologies,” says Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute. 

The United States and China, together, represent about 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. “We’re not going to move the needle on climate change unless the United States and China collaborate,” said Governor Newsom while in Beijing last week. On the necessity of California working directly with China, he added, “No other state has benefited more from the contributions of Chinese [people]. No other state is more burdened if we can’t work together to address and reconcile whatever differences we have.”

What has California achieved with China on climate issues? 

During his trip, Mr. Newsom’s office inked five nonbinding agreements with the Chinese national government and several provinces and cities. Those include commitments to focus on:

• Industrial decarbonization and reducing short-lived pollutants, like methane, with Guangdong province. 
• Clean energy deployment, especially offshore wind, with Jiangsu province. 
• Climate adaptation, including flood preparation, with Beijing.
• Decarbonization of the transportation sector and development of a trans-Pacific green shipping corridor with Shanghai. 
• Zero-emission vehicles, carbon markets, and climate finance with the Chinese national government. 

The agreements build upon past relationships. California has been working directly with China for years on climate policy. Mr. Newsom is the third consecutive California governor to visit China.

For instance, several of China’s provinces have copied California’s cap-and-trade program for industrial emissions. In 2014, China’s national government adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle credit trading system, partly as a way to phase out China’s subsidies of the electric vehicle industry.  

On offshore wind energy, California is looking to China for its expertise. “California is very interested in developing offshore wind,” says Dr. Lashof. “China is ahead in actually doing that. And they have more wind capacity than any place in the world. So there is an opportunity to learn as well as to teach.”

California and China have lots of reasons to get along: Nearly a third of Chinese immigrants to the United States live in California. China is the world’s second-largest economy; California is the world’s fifth-largest economy if it were measured like a country – and both economies are technologically advanced.

The California-China relationship has also nudged China toward greater transparency through shared goals, research, and data, according to Mary Nichols, vice chair of the California-China Climate Institute. 

How important is climate diplomacy between U.S. entities and China?

China is by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. And the U.S. comes in second. Efforts at cooperation make a difference – even if incremental. 

“There’s this not very glamorous but very important work going on in California and in China,” says Dr. Nichols. “I think people should know about it and at least take some comfort in the fact that there’s a lot of resources, a lot of talent going into working to try to get on top of this problem faster and more effectively than ever before.” 

One example of how the efforts have reduced greenhouse gas emissions: The city of Beijing’s air regulations, modeled on California’s, achieved a 95% drop in coal consumption there, according to Governor Newsom’s office. 

A stumbling block in the relationship is how China, despite its climate goals, continues to build new coal-powered plants elsewhere. 

California is also increasingly reliant on China for batteries in order for the state to meet its electric vehicle goals. Yet American critics of climate diplomacy deride the risk associated with depending on China and relinquishing battery production. 

What are other examples of subnational collaborations on climate?

Subnational collaborations are not new. Global organizations exist like the Under2 Coalition, a group co-founded by the California state government in 2015 and made up of over 270 states, regions, and other entities around the world that together account for more than half of the global gross domestic product. This group aims for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

C40 is another coalition made up of nearly 100 cities – including Abidjian, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Oslo. Membership requires cities to make demonstrable progress toward climate goals aligned with the Paris Agreement.  

A 2020 report by the World Resources Institute and the United Nations recognizes the increasing importance of subnational relationships in crafting effective climate policies and implementing those policies at the local level. And last year, the U.S. State Department created a Subnational Diplomacy Unit to support global relationships with state, city, and local leaders.

How impactful are these efforts? 

Subnational cooperation on climate change has remained relatively steady while cooperation among nations has not. President Barack Obama reached some key climate agreements with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2014, paving the way for the Paris climate agreement the following year. The U.S. withdrew from global climate cooperation under President Donald Trump and then recommitted to the Paris Agreement under President Joe Biden. China temporarily halted climate discussions with the U.S. last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. 

“U.S. federal policy on climate has been very inconsistent from administration to administration,” says Dr. Lashof. “California has had a much steadier progress on climate that really hasn’t been interrupted.”

That doesn’t mean subnational ties are immune from turmoil. A 2015 sister-city partnership between San Francisco and Xiamen has since been suspended because of issues between their two countries, according to Cai Biling, a program officer at the Ministry of Natural Resources in Beijing. 

Ms. Cai says she hopes the program for marine litter prevention and control can be restored, and that action on climate change “starts with every community and the people. ... The government ... can just lay the framework, but to put it into real action, we need our cities and our people.”

The relationship between China and the U.S. in 2023 is tense – complicated by concerns on both sides about trade, technology, and Taiwan. 

That tension in U.S.-China relations is plain to people in the business community, too. “Right now ... at the national level, it’s almost frozen. ... Both countries cannot afford to be that hostile,” says Wayne Song, founder and CEO of C4X and Green Carbon Nanotech, based in Suzhou, China.

Dr. Song believes subnational success can help thaw frosty relations higher up. “I think this kind of local conversation ... is raising the temperature a little bit so the ice will melt.”