U.S. Has No Grounds to Target China-California Climate Collaboration

Recently, U.S. Representative Young Kim, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, and senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee and Marsha Blackburn sent a joint letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, calling for an investigation into California's climate cooperation with China. In a statement, Kim said California's agreements with China "may violate the Constitution and undermine U.S. national security."

California has drawn the attention of these lawmakers because its state government has actively promoted climate cooperation with China in recent years, producing a series of positive results. These include signing memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with several Chinese ministries and provincial/municipal governments; establishing the California-China Climate Institute to facilitate research and exchanges on climate governance; and working with Shanghai to build a green shipping corridor and promote the decarbonization of the trans-Pacific shipping route linking Los Angeles, Long Beach and Shanghai.

"Unconstitutional" is one of the principal accusations leveled by Kim and her colleagues against California's climate cooperation with China. In their letter, they argue that agreements and other institutionalized engagements between California, including its state agencies and the University of California system, and Chinese entities may violate Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits any state from entering into any "Agreement or Compact" with a foreign power without the consent of Congress.

While this argument sounds plausible on the surface, it is in fact a deliberate misrepresentation. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), in a legal sidebar published in June 2017, noted that the constitutional restrictions at issue concern legally binding agreements. Legal research suggests that most climate-related declarations and MOUs between U.S. states and foreign governments are not legally binding and therefore do not require congressional approval. The sidebar specifically cited the memorandum signed by California and China, noting that because its provisions were expressly nonbinding, it was "unlikely that this MOU would trigger the restrictions of Article I, Section 10."

Indeed, cooperation with foreign governments on climate and other matters is far from unusual among U.S. states. New York State has signed an MOU with Denmark to support collaboration on offshore wind energy development. The states of Oregon, Illinois and Washington have signed trade and economic cooperation MOUs with the United Kingdom that include support for the Paris Agreement and related cooperation. California itself has signed cooperation agreements with countries including Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Norway. Given the sheer number of such agreements, the fact that these lawmakers have singled out only those with China makes it clear that their real concern has little to do with constitutionality — and everything to do with China.

The claim that California-China climate cooperation poses a threat to U.S. national security is even harder to substantiate. Whether it is clean energy cooperation or policy discussions on carbon emissions, none of these efforts touch upon sensitive military or security technologies. Broadly invoking "national security" in this context amounts to an extreme expansion of the concept.

A 2022 study by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, published in Science, examined the economic and national-security risks of cooperation between the United States and China on five key low-carbon technologies: solar, wind, batteries, carbon capture and sequestration, and "green" steel. "Our findings reveal national security threats are muted across the various low carbon technologies," said the study's lead author Michael Davidson, an assistant professor at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy and at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "A major benefit of integration is making these technologies more affordable, in addition to increased innovation."

California-China climate cooperation is by no means a one-way transfer of U.S. technology to China. It is a two-way process that can deliver mutual benefits. China has considerable technological and manufacturing strengths in areas such as batteries, solar power and wind equipment, while California has accumulated extensive experience in climate policy and regulation. It makes little sense for U.S. lawmakers to focus only on what the cooperation might offer China while ignoring the benefits it can bring to the United States.

This point was underscored by a group of experts including former California governor Jerry Brown in a Nature article in 2024. The authors highlighted the important role of subnational cooperation. They noted that as California moves rapidly to initiate offshore wind projects, it has turned to Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers, while China has modeled its new green-building regulations on California's Title 24 standards. "By sharing expertise, the United States and China can help one another to address their challenges," the authors wrote.

California's climate cooperation with China not only benefits the low-carbon, green development of both countries but also holds promise for providing the world with much-needed technological and policy tools to address climate change. It should never be reduced to a tool for political manipulation. By smearing and investigating California's climate cooperation with China, these U.S. lawmakers are swimming against the tide of history. Their actions only reveal an irresponsible, unscrupulous and pathological "anti-China reflex" — and in the end, they are bound to fail.

Source: Science and Technology Daily