Xiplomacy: Chinese president on biodiversity, climate change

BEIJING -- Co-organized by the French government, the United Nations and the World Bank, the One Planet Summit for biodiversity will be held on Monday.

Both China and France have been active in preserving biodiversity and battling climate change. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed China's resolution to tackle these challenges together with France during meetings and conversations with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.

The following are some highlights of his words.

During a video meeting with Macron and other European leaders in December 2020, Xi urged China and Europe to "give full play to their high-level dialogue mechanism on environment and climate, and give mutual support to each other in hosting international conferences on biodiversity, climate change, and conservation of nature."

During his phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron in June, Xi said China stands ready to strengthen strategic cooperation with the European Union (EU) to jointly tackle such global challenges as public health, climate change and biodiversity, so as to work for sound and steady development of China-EU relations.

In their telephone conversation ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year in January last year, Xi and Macron respectively expressed their hopes for strengthen coordination and cooperation with each other on climate change and biodiversity.

During their talks when Macron visited China in November 2019, Xi noted that efforts should be made to strengthen cooperation in fields including environmental protection and biodiversity conservation and expand pragmatic cooperation in new energy vehicles.

In a joint statement issued during his state visit to France in 2019, Xi and Macron announced that the two countries will "work together to push for global concerted efforts to address biodiversity loss" and implement the Paris Agreement in an all-round way.