US Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are visiting China this week in an effort to encourage the country to collaborate with the United States in addressing global warming. The two cabinet officials, who have Chinese ancestry, will meet with senior Chinese leaders in Beijing to emphasize the benefits of working together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This visit is seen as setting the stage for President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to China, with hopes that the focus will be on the importance of joint action between the two countries before the Copenhagen meeting in December to negotiate a global agreement on emissions reduction. Experts believe that cooperation between the largest developed country and the largest developing country is crucial for the success of a new global climate treaty. Kenneth Lieberthal, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute, stressed the significant potential and urgency for collaboration in addressing climate change. "It's not a situation where one side benefits while the other side pays. China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, although its per capita emissions are still lower. Chu, a Nobel physicist with a focus on climate change, is expected to advocate for US and Chinese action to address rising global temperatures in a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He warned US senators about the unprecedented threat climate change poses to our way of life, comparing it to a climatic shift as significant as the last Ice Age but in the opposite direction. Locke, a former governor from Washington state, is eager to demonstrate opportunities for China to reduce carbon dioxide emissions using US renewable technology such as solar, wind, and water." A Commerce Department official stated that there are significant market opportunities in China due to a high demand, but also acknowledged the challenges present. China heavily relies on coal for its energy needs, while the United States has the largest coal reserves and uses coal for a smaller percentage of its energy needs. Both countries have an incentive to work together on technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground, rather than releasing them into the air. Assistant energy secretary David Sandalow emphasized the importance of this collaboration in a recent interview with Reuters. "We believe that by working together, we can accomplish more than if we were working separately." The US is paying attention to China's efforts to build new nuclear power plants. President Obama is urging Congress to pass a bill to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, with pressure to convince China to agree to emissions caps at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting. Without China's commitment, a new climate change treaty is unlikely to be approved by the US Senate, according to Stuart Eizenstat, who led US negotiations for the Kyoto climate treaty in 1997. While Energy Secretary Chu and Commerce Secretary Locke are not traveling to Beijing for climate talks, the US hopes that increased cooperation with China will lead to a positive outcome in Copenhagen, as stated by Sandalow. China, along with 16 other major world economies, recently agreed to strive to limit global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. However, China has declined to establish a short-term emission reduction target, citing its relatively recent industrialization and the potential hinderance to growth and urbanization efforts in a country where many people live in poorer conditions compared to Western nations. Despite this, China's latest five-year plan aims to reduce energy intensity by 20 percent by the end of 2010, and the country has set a goal of having renewable energy account for 15 percent of total demand by 2020. The initial step for the Obama administration is to urge Beijing to turn these goals into official international obligations, according to Eizenstat. China will likely have to accept emission limits in the future, but this is not expected to happen in Copenhagen this December.