HANGZHOU, China — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in an increasing discordant relationship.
On multiple fronts, like computer hacking and maritime security, ties between China and the United States have frayed during the 7½ years of Obama’s presidency. The friction has worsened since the ascension of Xi as a powerful nationalist leader in 2013.
Yet the fact that he and Obama could set aside those tensions to work together on a joint plan to reduce greenhouse gases attests to the pragmatic personal rapport they have built, as well as to the complexity of the broader US-China relationship, a tangle of competing and congruent interests.
At a ceremony in this lakefront city, the two leaders submitted documents certifying their countries’ participation in the Paris agreement. They hailed the action as a critical step toward bringing it into force worldwide.
Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world’s emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world’s emissions.
“Despite our differences on other issues, we hope our willingness to work together on this issue will inspire further ambition and further action around the world,’’ Obama declared.
Xi praised the Paris agreement as a milestone, adding, “It was under Chinese leadership that much of this progress was made.’’
From the moment he stepped off Air Force One on his final visit to Asia as president, Obama confronted a resurgent China, undaunted by his efforts to restore America’s presence in the region and poised to capitalize on his troubles in winning congressional passage of his ambitious regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Obama’s chaotic welcome on the tarmac captured the mood. There were arguments at the airport between White House aides and Chinese security officials who tried to keep back reporters.
Shouting matches also broke out between Obama’s staff and guards over how many people were allowed into the state guesthouse where he and Xi later met.
Even China’s climate commitments were less a concession to US pressure than a restatement of its own goals. They included a promise for China’s carbon emissions to reach a plateau or decline “around 2030,’’ but without any specific target for reductions like those Obama pledged. That means China has plenty of room to continue burning fossil fuels to power its economy.
“The story of the past eight years is not mainly the pivot or the rebalance; it is the very substantial increases in Chinese capacities since 2008,’’ said Jeffrey A. Bader, who helped formulate Obama’s Asia strategy as his chief China adviser in the first term. “How has the US dealt with that?’’ he added. “How has the US confronted that?’’
The Obama administration has experimented with a variety of approaches: pledging to respect China’s “core interests’’ in 2009; shifting in 2011 to a more assertive stance — verging on containment — as Obama articulated his pivot to Asia; then resisting China’s proposal in 2012 to embark on a new model of great-power relations.
To some critics, that was an inconsistent strategy — one that alternately cheered or sowed anxiety among US allies, and likewise alienated or emboldened China. Under Xi’s leadership, China has made aggressive claims to shoals and reefs in the South China Sea, picking fights with neighbors like the Philippines and Vietnam.
“This back and forth has, I think, exacerbated what was already a growing problem with a China that was already more assertive in the context of the financial crisis,’’ said Michael J. Green, who was chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But the administration’s defenders, like Bader, argue that Obama was merely following in the tradition of presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, dating back to Richard M. Nixon.
They have tried to manage China’s rise by drawing it into the international system and prodding it to accept rules of the road in trade, navigation, and other areas.
However, China has dismissed a recent ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague that rebuked its reclamation of land on disputed shoals in the South China Sea and invalidated its claims to a large swath of those waters.
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