China climate envoy Xie Zhenhua retires

BEIJING (AFP): China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua, who has represented the world’s leading CO2 emitter on the global stage for most of the last 16 years, has retired on health grounds, state media said Friday.

Xie will be replaced by Liu Zhenmin, a former vice foreign minister who also previously worked at the United Nations on economic and social affairs.

Veteran diplomat Xie is known for his strong ties to his US counterpart and “good old friend” John Kerry, despite the complicated relations between the two nations.

Xie’s ability to work with his American peers has been credited with helping push forward major global climate accords, including the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, and the most recent one at COP28 in Dubai.

Born in Tianjin in 1949, Xie made a career in China’s green sector, before spearheading his country’s negotiators at global climate conferences.

He retired once before in 2019, but was appointed as special climate envoy again in 2021.

Xie co-chaired the inaugural meeting of the China-US Climate Action Working Group, a videoconference, on Friday, state media said.

The group was set up after a November meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in San Francisco, talks widely seen as an attempt to stabilise recent fraught geopolitical tensions between the two countries.

“Both sides praised the successful launch of the working group and engaged in in-depth and friendly discussions on key areas of cooperation, including energy transition, methane, (and the) circular economy,” state broadcaster CCTV said Friday.

The two sides agreed to keep in close contact and “deepen practical cooperation”, it added.

The report then confirmed that Xie had stepped down and that Liu was his successor.

Xie’s retirement had been expected, with media reports last year citing health issues.

His replacement Liu “is very skilled in communication, very composed… and he speaks English well”, a source told the South China Morning Post in December.