Past Events

On April 8th and 9th, 2009, the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations held a major gathering in Beijing co-sponsored by the China State Meteorological Administration’s Expert Panel on Climate Change, Peking University’s College of Engineering and Tsinghua University’s Low Carbon Energy Laboratory.

John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and head of President Obama’s Transition Team, delivered the keynote speech and over 100 Chinese and American delegates and participants attended the discussions at Beida.

The conference explored China’s evolving position on climate change and the urgent need to find ways for our two countries to promote more collaborative action to deal with this admittedly daunting challenge.

The meeting raised the question of what should follow the Roadmap? How can those of us outside of government best help catalyze both public and the private stakeholders on both sides to better galvanize in a common solution?

The links below lead to the text of John Podesta’s opening speech, the blog post about the meeting from The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos and a summary of the conference from the Peking University homepage.

Read a transcript of John Podesta’s keynote speech

Read Evan Osnos’ blog post about the meeting

Read the Peking University’s summary of the conference (Chinese)