Incoming US climate envoy John Kerry said he expected to work with China on climate change, as he seeks to bring Washington back to the Paris accord club and enhance global action to address the crisis.

"They were a partner on climate as we competed with them at other things during the Obama administration," Kerry told National Public Radio when asked if he can collaborate with China on climate issues as the two countries compete on other issues.

"We've been there, done that. But if we don't work as a primary extraordinary effort on climate, we're all cooked," the former secretary of state said in the interview aired Thursday.

Kerry was tapped to act as "climate czar" for President-elect Joe Biden, who vowed to immediately re-enter the 2015 Paris Agreement, a deal that Kerry helped negotiate.

The 76-year-old former senator seemed ready to be more pragmatic when it comes to address what he believed are the challenges in China's climate realm.

He said Chinese banks are still funding coal-fired power production.

"So we have to talk to China about that. But we have to do it in a way that doesn't force people into a corner to hunker down and head towards conflict," Kerry said.

In addition to conducting ultralow emission upgrading of its coal-fired power plants, China has pledged to eliminate outdated and unqualified ones and to approve new coal-fired power projects "orderly and moderately based on needs", according to a statement from the National Development and Reform Commission early this year.

The United States formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change on Nov 4, a day after Election Day, following a three-year process.

Kerry said rejoining the Paris accord is just the first step.

"It's simple for the United States to rejoin but it's not so simple for the United States to regain its credibility," Kerry said in the NPR interview.

"I think we have to approach this challenge with some humility and with a very significant effort by the United States to show that we're serious and we really are back," he said.

Climate change is among a host of global issues experts and diplomats have called the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gas to work together to deal with.

David Dollar, senior fellow at John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution, said that without the US and China, it is not realistic to deal with climate change, the pandemic or the global debt crisis.

"In terms of climate change, I think Americans are much more serious about this," Dollar said. "I think you've got a lot of American support now," he said, adding that there has been a similar change in China over the last 10 years.

"So we should have better cooperation on some specific issues like climate, even though we're going to continue to have disagreements about various issues," he told China Daily on Thursday.

Graham Allison, a Harvard professor, said it was "good news" that when the new administration takes office, Biden understands there's not only nuclear MAD — nuclear mutual assured destruction, which would be the outcome if the US and China ended up in a war.

"But there's also climate MAD — climate mutual assured destruction, in which if the two greatest greenhouse gas emitters don't find ways to cooperate, we can create a biosphere that nobody can live in," Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, said at a virtual meeting on Dec 3.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at a United Nations General Assembly session via video in late September, said China aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, both ambitious climate goals that will spur the world's transition to green and low-carbon development.

Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said that in the post-pandemic era, China-US cooperation cannot and should not be absent.

Climate change is among the global challenges China and the United States should coordinate and cooperate to resolve, he said at a virtual US-China Business Council 2020 annual gala Wednesday night.

The two countries should also work together to combat COVID-19, promote global economic recovery and growth, and reform and improve the international governance system and architecture to better address the global challenges, the ambassador said.

"This is also what the international community expects of us," he said.

The ambassador also said that the continuing deterioration of US-China relations, already at their lowest point in decades, will cause "irreparable damage" to the fundamental interests of both countries.

"At a time of deepening globalization and closely intertwined interests between the two countries, a new 'Cold War' and 'decoupling' will lead nowhere," he said.

He reiterated that cooperation is the only right choice for both countries, and that their shared interests always come first, so much so that no difference justifies any conflict or confrontation.