Oslo, 24 July 1009 

Talks between senior Chinese and US officials next week will “advance the ball” in climate talks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will host their Chinese counterparts at the administration’s first US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SED) on 27-28 July. 

While the SED will have a broad economic focus, including addressing the economic downturn, the officials will discuss bilateral cooperation on climate change and clean energy in Monday’s session.

“I don’t expect a breakthrough, but with a broad level of senior participation …it will advance the ball,” a senior US administration official said at a press briefing Thursday.

He said the SED was part of a “continual process” of multilateral and bilateral efforts taking place to try to find common ground between the world’s two biggest GHG emitters. Clinton and Geithner will meet with State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier Wang Qishan.

Other administration officials, including Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson, White House energy and climate coordinator Carol Browner and US climate change envoy Todd Stern will also participate in bilateral talks. Stern and Clinton have been engaging with their counterparts in China and India over the past few months to try to encourage the emerging economies to accept some form of emission-reduction commitments.

Officials in both countries have pushed back on accepting binding targets and have aired concerns that potential US legislation may impose a kind of border adjustment carbon tariff on their imports.

But the senior US administration official said he hopes the US and China can find a middle ground, with some flexibility on the baseline year against which emissions reductions are measured. “As long as we can move forward on that kind of basis, there's going to be much less concern (about border tariffs) at the end of the day,” he said.

“They (the Chinese) will have less concern about those types of provisions because those kinds of provisions will be, I think, less likely.” 
The official said President Obama has warned Congress not to include such trade protectionist measures in its future climate legislation.

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