President Trump’s decision to pull the U. S. out of the Paris accord has put China in partnership with California in pushing the global climate agenda.
Gov. Jerry Brown met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in a rare diplomatic coup that catapults California into quasi-national status as a negotiator with China following the decision last week by President Trump to pull the U. S. out of the Paris climate accord .
Their encounter underlined the extent to which Trump, as he pursues an “America first” foreign policy, is being sidelined on the world stage. Xi spent nearly an hour talking to Brown, one of the administration’s loudest, most powerful critics on the environment.
They discussed global warming and green technology in the Great Hall of the People, a granite-columned building on Tiananmen Square reserved for high-level dignitaries, political gatherings and ceremonial occasions.
“It’s highly significant that the governor of California can meet with the president of China and talk about the foremost issue of our time, ” Brown said, sounding especially jovial on the third day of his weeklong China tour. “It’s very clear he welcomes an increased role on the part of California.”
Xi emphasized the state’s unique economic impact and encouraged California to promote ties on the local level in science, innovation and green development, according to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry.
Brown started his trip with visits to the southern Chinese cities of Chengdu and Nanjing, where he repeated his grim warnings about climate change and signed agreements on clean energy.
Xi “has definitely given the green light for more collaboration between China and California and, I would say, other states through this subnational-level arrangement, ” Brown said.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is also in Beijing for a forum of global energy ministers. The Energy Department has given no indication he will meet with Xi.
The leaders’ discussion appeared as much about symbolism as substance.
“He vaults over the parochial sense of governor to governor, and he vaults into the world of state to nation, ” said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on U. S.-China Relations in New York, who wrote a 1978 biography of Brown.
The meeting built on a relationship that started when Xi’s father met Brown in California nearly 40 years ago during his first round as governor. Brown greeted Xi when Xi visited Los Angeles in 2012 as China’s vice president. They spoke again in Rancho Mirage during a 2013 summit with President Obama at the Sunnylands estate and in Seattle two years later.
