In October 2021, Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford Center at Peking University, and Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s China Program partnered with Peking University’s Institute of Energy to organize a series of roundtables intended to promote discussion around how China and the United States can accelerate decarbonization and cooperate with one another to meet their carbon neutrality goals by mid-century. The thematic areas included U.S.- China collaboration on climate change, global sustainable finance, corporate climate pledges, and the opportunities and challenges for the acceleration of decarbonization in both countries in general, as well as specifically for the power, transportation, and industry sectors.

The roundtable series brought together leading American and Chinese current and former officials, and experts in the public and private sectors working on energy, climate, the environment, industry, transportation, and finance. This report reviews the key themes and takeaways that emerged from the closed-door discussions. It builds on the “U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis” released by the U.S. Department of State on April 17, 2021 and shares some common themes with the “U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s” released on November 10, 2021.

This report further identifies more concrete and additional promising areas for accelerated decarbonization and bilateral collaboration, as well as the obstacles to be tackled, including institutional, political, and financial constraints. This report could serve as a basis for concrete goals and measures for future U.S.-China cooperation on energy and the climate. It also highlights the contributions universities can make to the global energy transition. The roundtable series identifies areas most critical or potent for bilateral collaboration, paving the way for concrete action plans at the national, local, and sectoral levels. Section 1 offers a brief overview of the acceleration of decarbonization in the U.S. and in China. Section 2 identifies the opportunities and challenges of U.S.-China cooperation on climate change. Sections 3-7 delve into specific promising areas for accelerated decarbonization and opportunities and hurdles for bilateral collaboration in corporate, finance, power, transportation, and industrial sectors.

This report is not a comprehensive review of all the relevant areas pertaining to decarbonization in China and the U.S. and bilateral collaboration on climate change. For example, this roundtable series focused on climate mitigation. Another strategy to respond to climate change is adaption, which we reserve for potential future discussion in a separate report. Additionally, the focus of this report is on energy. Important measures such as reforestation as a carbon sink are reserved for separate discussions. The views expressed in this report represent those of the participants at the roundtable series and do not necessarily represent the positions of the organizing institutions. Chatham House rules were used throughout the roundtables to facilitate open and frank discussion, so views are not attributed to individual participants

In this chapter from Alliances, Nuclear Weapons and Escalation: Managing Deterrence in the 21st Century,  Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that there are several reasons to suspect that the nuclear dynamics between the US and China are different from those that existed between the Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War. For one, China’s approach to nuclear weapons is fundamentally different from the US and Soviet approaches of assured destruction capability. Instead, China’s policy of assured retaliation with a no-first-use pledge, designed to deter nuclear attack and coercion, reduces the strategic importance of nuclear weapons in the bilateral relationship.

Mastro notes that the great power nuclear relationship also impacts US allies differently. She points out that European countries are committed to collective defence, but no North Atlantic Treaty Organization – style construct exists between US allies in Asia. Additionally, key US European allies such as France and the United Kingdom have their own nuclear capabilities while Asian allies rely exclusively on the US to deter nuclear attack against their countries.

Her chapter evaluates the role that nuclear deterrence plays in the US–China strategic relationship. It lays out the pathways to conflict and the implications for nuclear use, evaluates how allies influence nuclear dynamics (the conditions under which nuclear weapons would most likely be used and how) and explores how escalation to nuclear conflict may affect US allies in the region depending on their level of involvement in the contingency. In doing so, Mastro highlights that, when it comes to nuclear use, there is a sizeable difference between what is possible (the operational realities) and what is plausible (the strategic logic behind potential use).