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John Kerry To Travel to China Amid Afghan Crisis

John Kerry
John Kerry (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
August 27, 2021

John Kerry will take off next week to tackle climate change cooperation with China on the heels of an ISIS attack in Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. troops dead.

Other Biden administration officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have put plans on hold amid the growing crisis.

The trip will be the White House climate envoy's second to the country this year. Kerry has been a fervent advocate within the Biden administration for engaging with an increasingly aggressive China, calling for the two countries to end their "suicide pact" and cooperate on climate change. The diplomat will implore China's leaders to end the financing of coal energy projects during the trip.

China continues to use slave labor supply chains and coal to fuel its green energy enterprise. The country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, and Kerry admitted in May that solar panels manufactured in Xinjiang province are sometimes produced through the forced labor of the oppressed Uyghur Muslim minority. 

As a former secretary of state in the Obama administration, the Biden diplomat has extensive experience in dealing with the conflict in Afghanistan. Kerry supported a withdrawal from Afghanistan as early as 2009, making him one of the first prominent Democrats to do so.

Thousands of Americans remain in the Taliban-controlled country along with thousands of Afghan allies. One Afghan translator told the Washington Free Beacon he fears death at the hands of the Taliban if the Biden administration follows through on its Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline.