(Bloomberg) -- China’s new climate chief plans to visit the US in May for formal talks with his American counterpart, seeking to bolster one of the few bright spots in relations between the two global leaders.

Special Envoy for Climate Change Liu Zhenmin will take a delegation from different Chinese ministries to Washington, DC, for a first formal face-to-face meeting with US counterpart John Podesta, he said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. 

China will aim to extend cooperation on issues including energy, the circular economy and efforts to curb greenhouse gases beyond carbon dioxide, Liu said.

“Common ground means that both the US and China want to continue to lead this global process to respond to climate change,” he said. “We have to cooperate as far as possible.” The nations “also need to respect each other on all issues,” according to Liu.

Liu and Podesta, both appointed to their roles in January, have spoken virtually and met in person briefly at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin last week. They’re following in the footsteps of Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry, who had a famously strong relationship that kept climate talks alive even as broader relations between the countries disintegrated. 

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The upcoming US-China talks are expected to cover terrain on which the two superpowers agreed to collaborate after negotiations in California last year. That includes facilitating climate action by subnational governments and curbing releases of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. 

Experts in US-China climate relations expect Liu’s visit could help accelerate slow-moving talks under a working group that sprung from the California talks. And it could help the two negotiators forge trust ahead of the COP29 UN summit in Azerbaijan this November. 

But Podesta and Liu are confronting trickier topics too — including difficult questions over the future of international climate finance that are set to take center stage at COP29. China’s classification as a developing country means that under UN climate pacts it isn’t obligated to contribute to financing climate mitigation and adaptation projects in other developing nations. But China is coming under increasing pressure — including from the US — to do so. And despite recent progress, the US has a poor historic record delivering on its own climate funding commitments. 

“It’s very tempting for both sides to use this issue for their own favor,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “That’s a trap that the two sides will easily fall into, and that’s a trap they should definitely avoid for the sake of having a good conference in Azerbaijan.”

Cooperation between China and the US — the top two global emitters — has been key in recent years to unlocking progress on climate action, including global pacts such as the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015. Former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from that deal in 2017, before President Joe Biden’s administration rejoined four years later.

With the two candidates facing off again in this year’s US election, Liu said a potential Trump victory is raising concern in the climate community, and he urged both Republicans and Democrats to support action to curb emissions. 

“I definitely hope that the American people will support the government to stay in the climate change process, stay in the Paris Agreement, even if Trump wins the next election,” Liu said. “Not to repeat the mistake that they made during his last administration.”

--With assistance from Luz Ding and Jennifer A. Dlouhy.

(Updates with details on discussion and comment from US-China climate expert, from sixth paragraph.)

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