China mocks ‘powerless’ Joe Biden

Mr Biden spoke at the opening of the COP26 UN climate summit on Monday, stressing the need for “action and solidarity” while also using the moment to “apologise” for the fact “the US, under the last administration”, pulled out of the Paris accord.

“I guess I shouldn’t apologise, but I do apologise for the fact that the United States under the last administration pulled out of the Paris agreement. That kind of put us behind the eight ball a bit,” Mr Biden said.

Beijing-backed news outlet the Global Times published a piece the following day that ridiculed Mr Biden’s “noble” apology.

The report highlighted the discord between American voters, noting some comments online from “netizens” who “cannot wait until 2024 when the Republican Party, or even Donald Trump himself, apologises for Biden’s apology”.

The report attempts to highlight the more controversial side of the climate change discussion in the US and played up the differences between Mr Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Xu Liang, an associate professor at the School of International Relations of the Beijing International Studies University, claimed that such displays by American leaders showed “the declining US”.

Meanwhile, Xi has been absent from the Group of 20 summit in Rome and this week’s global climate talks in Scotland, drawing criticism from Mr Biden and questions about China’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Biden criticised counterpart Xi for skipping the summit, after China declined to sign the methane pledge.

“It just is a gigantic issue and they walked away,” Mr Biden said before leaving Glasgow.

He said the same was true of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is also missing the talks.

But China and Russia pushed back on that assessment.

And in a sign the acrimony could sour negotiations, China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told reporters late Tuesday he did not support shifting the temperature warming goal to 1.5C, from a less ambitious Paris cap of “well below” 2C.

“If we are to only focus on 1.5C, it means we are destroying this consensus between all parties,” Xie said

China is the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and has pledged to begin reducing that output by 2030 and obtaining carbon neutrality by 2060.

The US and others have urged Beijing to make bigger commitments, but Xi’s administration has strongly implied those will only come in exchange for political concessions.

Mr Trump himself had seized on Mr Biden’s comment, claiming that world leaders were “laughing” at Mr Biden.

“We have never been thought of so poorly as we are right now, including the fact that the leaders of foreign countries, all of whom are at the top of their game, are laughing at Biden as he makes the rounds in Europe,” Mr Trump said.

“So low and so bad for America. There has never been a time like it,”

However, some outlets, such as Axios, have instead argued that Mr Biden’s comments were an acknowledgment that the US will have a difficult time convincing other countries to follow its lead on climate issues after flip-flopping between directions with different administrations.

Those efforts might have paid off after 18 countries joined the US and Canada in creating a “climate pledge” to stop public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022. All funds will be redirected towards clean energy spending instead, Reuters reported.

Originally published as China mocks ‘powerless’ Biden over climate summit ‘apology’