From Desert to Oasis?

Xi Jinping’s Tree-Planting Toast and the Future of U.S.-China Environmental Cooperation

Last week, China’s President Xi Jinping shocked retired American teacher Ron Sakolsky by mentioning him in a toast at a White House state dinner as a “shining example of friendly exchanges” between Chinese and American people. Sakolsky found himself in unexpected company: Xi’s brief history of U.S.-China friendship included George Washington’s purchase of Chinese porcelain; the U.S.’ World War II “Hump” airlift over the Himalayas, Ping-Pong diplomacy and the redwood trees Nixon gave China in 1972.

Who is Ron Sakolsky? The story is a heartwarming one. In 1999, he was teaching English in Henan Province (something I did myself in Wuhan a few years earlier) when he saw a television report about Yin Yuzhen, a farmer planting trees in an effort to slow desertification in Inner Mongolia. He raised $5,000 to help her buy saplings and later traveled to the desert to meet her.

Yin tracked down Sakolsky earlier this year through an online campaign, which led to a reunion with Yin and a chance for him to see the fruits of his contribution: tens of thousands of trees, some now standing more than 30 feet tall. The work has since become part of a broader official Chinese narrative of environmental success in China, and state media played up Sakolsky’s visit to the project site this year. Although Xi did not frame the story as environmental cooperation, his choice of tree-planting stories (two of them, counting Nixon’s redwoods) is telling. An important undercurrent here is the shifting role of environmental cooperation in our understanding of China and its global rise. Let’s assess the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all, from the standpoint of both international cooperation and the health of the planet.

The Good

First, the focus on the environment gives us an opportunity to note the extraordinary gains China has made in reducing pollution over the last decade and a half. Particulate air pollution has fallen by some 60% over the last 20 years with much of the gains coming since China declared a “war on pollution” in 2013. Many outside of China do not realize that the country has seen gains akin to what the U.S. experienced in the 1970s in the wake of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other foundational environmental laws, although average levels in China are still well above WHO guidelines. Second, the reference to this bottom-up, people-to-people exchange reminds us of what many see as an early 2000s golden age of civil society growth and innovation in China that has tightened in recent years. Third, the choice of a green story is likely no accident. China has been a major proponent of so-called “South-South” environmental cooperation, which doubles as economic statecraft and diplomatic strengthening. China has actively exported its desertification control model, from technical support for Africa’s Great Green Wall in the Sahel to desertification control centers with Mongolia.

The Bad

At the same time, the appeal to an example of ground-level exchange of such modest scale shows the extent to which official cooperation channels have died out. Gone are the days of the Kerry-Xie climate working group, the Sunnylands statement, and the U.S. and China working together to push through the Paris Agreement. Last week’s summit produced tariff cuts on non-sensitive goods, new talks on AI, and a short trade truce extension, but nothing on climate. In fact, the White House announced that China will import 10 million metric tons of coal from the U.S. in each of 2027 and 2028.  In 2021, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi was already more circumspect about climate cooperation, saying that it can’t be an oasis surrounded by a desert. In other words, cooperation was conditional on the wider relationship. At this time when the U.S. was more willing to cooperate, China used it as leverage, suspending climate talks in 2022 after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Now that China is seeking relief from U.S. tariffs and export controls, it is offering an olive branch. Xi’s gesture is a low-cost reset signal, but perhaps also a way to buy more time.

The U.S. has pulled back too. The end of Fulbright China, canceled university partnerships, and tightened visa rules for international students enrollment, mean that the kind of connections that produced Sakolsky’s story are becoming harder to form. Dramatic U.S. cuts in foreign aid, including the dismantling of USAID, also signal a weakening American appetite for international engagement.

Xi’s remarks also comes at a time when “green” has become a battleground over security and geopolitical positioning. It has become mainstream politics in the U.S. to see Chinese clean technologies – EVs, clean energy, batteries, and critical minerals – as a security risk and a source of growing Chinese economic strength. It is telling that EVs and batteries were excluded from the summit’s tariff deal. The Chinese gesture at a reopening of cooperation should be seen as an opportunity to seek a better equilibrium; however, anti-China political dynamics in Washington D.C., and many other parts of the U.S. make such a path a challenging one.

Finally, the focus on positive green cooperation obscures darker corners of China’s overseas conduct. Despite record Chinese clean energy engagement in Belt and Road countries last year ($18.3 billion in wind, solar, and waste-to-energy), China’s oil and gas engagement more than tripled , to roughly $71.5 billion, and fossil fuels made up more than 74 percent of its overseas energy engagement. Moreover, insufficient progress has been made on China’s growing export of pollution, such as the captive coal plants powering Chinese-backed nickel processing in Indonesia (spurred in part by Indonesia’s own policies) and environmental harms from nickel mining.

The Ugly

Xi’s speech did not mention that it would be much more difficult to make a Sakolsky-like donation today given tighter regulation of Chinese civil society.

Nor did he mention that the desirability and success of China’s tree planting efforts have been contested. Researchers have documented low survival rates, monocultures, and excessive water use in some regions. Afforestation policies and grassland restoration have also involved herder resettlement and restrictions on grazing that have generated opposition in Inner Mongolia.

None of this makes renewed eco-cooperation less valuable. But it is worth asking what the Sakolsky of 2050 looks like. An American teacher moved by a news report today might struggle to find a channel, on either side of the Pacific, to fund a burgeoning environmental program. If Xi’s toast represents a genuine opening and an effort to find a new and mutually acceptable equilibrium, rebuilding those channels, official and unofficial, would be the proof.

China, International Cooperation