Last month, two veteran diplomats met in Shanghai to renew a 20-year-old working relationship and hammer out the text of a sensitive joint communiqué.

The communiqué in question — the joint US-China statement addressing the climate crisis — reconfirmed the two countries’ commitment to working together to meet the Paris climate goals. The two men who signed it — John Kerry, the US climate envoy, and his counterpart, Xie Zhenhua — are at the centre of hopes that the two countries can begin co-operating again to tackle climate change after the disruption of the Trump years.

“Kerry has taken a positive and realistic approach to working with the Chinese, and I don’t think it is an accident that China chose Xie as his counterpart and reunited the two men,” says Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova university in the US.