Rishi Iyengar
In the space of one week this month, China and the United States held two bilateral meetings of the kind that have been rare in recent years amid their escalating diplomatic conflict.
The first, on May 8 and 9, was a meeting of the two countries’ new climate envoys in Washington, featuring discussions on the energy transition, greenhouse gases, decarbonization, and a commitment to continue “technical and policy exchanges” on those issues. Another high-level meeting between the two sides on these issues is set to take place in Berkeley, California, next week.
The second meeting took place on May 14 in a more neutral venue—Switzerland—and focused on a far more nascent and uncertain arena for U.S.-China cooperation. Delegations from both governments met in Geneva to start a bilateral conversation on artificial intelligence, aimed at mitigating the global risks from advanced AI systems.
Readouts from both meetings cited as their basis the November 2023 summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco, a dialogue seen as a tentative (albeit limited) diplomatic thaw. Despite the animosity that has come to define the U.S.-China relationship for most of the last decade, it represents an effort to keep lines of communication open and find common ground on specific issues. AI and climate, on the face of it, check some important boxes.
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