US Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are visiting China to encourage the country to collaborate with the United States in efforts to combat global warming. The two Chinese-American officials will meet with Chinese leaders to emphasize the mutual benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This visit precedes President Barack Obama's upcoming trip to China, where discussions on joint action between the two countries are expected to take place before a global climate treaty meeting in Copenhagen in December. Cooperation between the US and China, as the world's largest developed and developing countries, is seen as crucial for the success of efforts to address climate change. Kenneth Lieberthal, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute, emphasized the significant potential and urgent need for collaboration on this issue. "It's not a situation where one party benefits while the other suffers." China has recently surpassed the United States as the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming, although its per capita emissions are still lower. Chu, a Nobel physicist with a focus on climate change, is expected to advocate for action from both the US and China to combat rising global temperatures in a speech at Tsinghua University. "We are facing a serious threat from climate change," Chu warned US senators, comparing the potential impact to a significant climatic shift. Locke, a former governor from Washington state, is eager to highlight opportunities for China to reduce carbon emissions using US renewable technologies like solar and wind power. A Commerce Department official stated that there are significant market opportunities for companies in China due to a high demand in the country, but there are also substantial challenges. China heavily relies on coal for energy, while the United States has the largest coal reserves and uses it for about 22 percent of its energy needs. This creates an incentive for the two countries to work together on technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground instead of releasing them into the atmosphere. Assistant energy secretary David Sandalow emphasized the importance of this collaboration in a recent interview with Reuters. "We believe that we can achieve more when we work together rather than separately." China's efforts to construct new nuclear power plants have also attracted the interest of American companies. As President Obama urges Congress to finalize a bill aimed at reducing US greenhouse gas emissions, there is significant pressure on him to persuade China to agree to a specific emissions limit at the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen in December. Stuart Eizenstat, the former lead US negotiator for the Kyoto climate treaty in 1997, which was never ratified by the US, stated that without China's commitment, a new climate change agreement is unlikely to be approved by the US Senate. Even though Chu and Locke are not planning to travel to Beijing for discussions on a bilateral climate agreement, the US is hopeful that closer collaboration with China will help achieve a positive outcome in Copenhagen, according to Sandalow. China, along with 16 other major world economies, recently agreed to aim for keeping the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. However, China has chosen not to establish a short-term emissions reduction target. China argues that it has only been industrializing for a brief period, and implementing strict caps could hinder growth and urbanization efforts in a country where many people live in poorer conditions compared to the West. Despite this, China's most recent five-year plan aims to reduce energy intensity by 20 percent by the end of 2010 and plans to use renewable energy to fulfill 15 percent of total demand by 2020. Eizenstat suggested that the Obama administration should urge Beijing to turn these goals into enforceable global agreements as an initial move. He also mentioned that China will likely need to accept emissions limits in the future, although this is not expected to happen during the upcoming conference in Copenhagen.