China is ready to strengthen its cooperation with the United States to combat climate change, Premier Wen Jiabao told US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, state media reported.
“China will cement policy dialogue with the United States, take the joint tackling of climate change as an important aspect of cooperation and push for positive results in the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference,” Xinhua news agency quoted Wen as saying.
China, the third-largest economy in the world, is one of biggest polluters but as a developing country is not bound by the Kyoto Protocol.
The Copenhagen meeting in December is set to hammer out a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when expires in 2012.
Pelosi, a vocal advocate of environmental protection, is leading a delegation from the US Congress to China on a working visit devoted to energy and climate change.
On Tuesday she said the fight against global warming was “an opportunity that we cannot miss” for US-China relations.
China and the United States are the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Former US president George W. Bush rejected all constraints which would not have affected emerging economies such as China and India, but his successor, Barack Obama, has decided to do more in the battle against global warming.
That the Chinese government managed, or scripted, Barak Obama while not budging on the issues says something about the Chinese character that few outside of China realize.