China Mocks Biden’s ‘Absurd’ Attempt to Make Nice with John Kerry Climate Visit

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy fo
U.S. Department of State via AP

China’s state-run Global Times did not think much of U.S. “climate envoy” John Kerry’s visit to Tianjin in a Thursday editorial, blasting Kerry’s climate-change talks as an ineffectual effort to mend fences without giving China the apologies and restitution it deserves for various alleged American offenses.

The Global Times said it was “quite absurd” for the Biden administration to think it can separate “cooperation on climate issues” from other aspects of the bruised U.S.-Chinese relationship, scoffing at President Joe Biden’s attempt to “look righteous and reasonable through the lens of climate cooperation.”

“The overall U.S. policy toward China has been so wicked. It has imposed a whole-of-government and wide-scale crackdown on China. Then the US suddenly put on a friendly face on the climate issue, inviting China to cooperate with it as if nothing has ever happened,” the Global Times fulminated.

As is usually the case with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda today, the Global Times strongly hinted Biden could begin repairing America’s bilateral relationship with China by dropping all investigations into the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus and accepting the CCP’s phony narrative of the pandemic. 

The editorial suggested no other gesture of good faith could begin reversing America’s terrible campaign to “divide the world” by blaming China for the pandemic:

The US strategic containment against China has severely divided the world and threatened China’s long-term security. Objectively speaking, the US has destroyed the foundation for the world to do something great together. The COVID-19 pandemic is surging across the world but countries are acting in their own ways. This is the result of political antagonism in today’s world.

The US is, on the one hand, making the utmost effort to divide the world, while on the other, building a drawbridge over the huge gap among the major powers. The rope of the drawbridge is held in Washington’s hand. The US lowers the drawbridge when it needs it, and raises it up when it doesn’t need it any more. It shows Washington’s unscrupulous desire to control the world. Is there any reason for China to let the US get whatever it wants?

The editorial also demanded an end to all American efforts to “contain” China and “suffocate” its development with “zero-sum” policies before climate cooperation could possibly resume.

The Global Times scoffed that America “lacks both morality and justice” to criticize China’s utterly horrendous environmental record, sneering about U.S. “arrogance” at roughly the same time Kerry got around to criticizing the CCP for recklessly building carbon-spewing coal power plants across China and the Third World.

Kerry told reporters on Thursday that China’s unending coal power spree could “undo” global progress on climate change.

Kerry said it was clear that “the addition of more coal plants represents a significant challenge to the efforts of the world to deal with the climate crisis.”

Echoing the Global Times editorial on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry that it was “impossible for China-U.S. climate cooperation to be elevated above the overall environment of China-U.S. relations.”

“The ball is now in the United States’ court, and the U.S. should stop seeing China as a threat and opponent,” Wang pontificated.

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