CLIIMATE envoys from China and the United States met in Beijing today as the rival nations seek to rebuild bridges burned in disputes over trade and territorial claims.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that US envoy John Kerry was meeting with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua for the first extensive face-to-face climate discussions between representatives of the world’s two worst climate polluters after a hiatus of nearly a year.

Mr Kerry is the third senior US official in recent weeks to travel to China for meetings with their counterparts, following visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Beijing has pledged to level off carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, but the US and the European Union have urged it to adopt more ambitious reduction targets.

At the same time, climate change-denying Republican senators continue to hamper any discussion of action to cut US pollution levels.

The aim of Joe Biden’s administration in the Beijing talks is to achieve “stability, if we can, without conceding anything,” Mr Kerry told politicians ahead of his visit.

A Xinhua commentary said on Sunday that recent US-China official interactions are a “good sign for preventing further miscalculations and steering bilateral relations back on track.”

But it added that Beijing was seeking more political concessions, something the US has said it will not provide.

Both countries are currently experiencing extreme heat, with China recording its highest temperature on record, 52.2°C, in the north-west.

In the US, a heat dome over the south-west has left millions of people under a heatwave warning, with forecasters predicting that temperature records will be broken.

Meanwhile, finance ministers from the G20 nations met in India today to address critical global challenges such as climate change, although most of the discussions focused on improving relations amid tensions with China and divisions on policy towards Russia and international debt.