John Kerry has said the climate crisis is a “universal threat” and must be separated from politics during talks between the US and China.

Kerry, the US climate envoy and former secretary of state, is in Beijing for talks with senior Chinese officials. It is hoped the talks can help repair relations between the two sides – the world’s two largest economies and carbon emitters – before the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai at the end of the year.

On Wednesday Kerry met the Chinese vice-president, Han Zheng, saying the two days of talks so far had been constructive but complex.

Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the US and China in recent years, Kerry said climate issues should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that required the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve.

“We have the ability to … make a difference with respect to climate,” he said at a meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, China’s parliament building.

Kerry arrived on Saturday as China, parts of Europe and the US experienced scorching heatwaves. China, which is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, this week recorded all-time high temperatures in some parts of the country. Parts of the north-west exceeded 52C.

Kerry has met the senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the premier, Li Qiang, and his climate envoy counterpart, Xie Zhenhua.

“If we can come together over these next months leading up to Cop28, which will be the most important since Paris, we will have an opportunity to be able to make a profound difference on this issue,” Kerry told Han, according to Reuters.

The bilateral talks are the first since Beijing suddenly suspended climate cooperations with Washington last August, in retaliation for a visit by the then US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan. Beijing claims Taiwan is a province of China and called the visit provocative.

“We’re just reconnecting,” Kerry told reporters on Wednesday. “We’re trying to re-establish the process we have worked on for years. We’re trying to carve out a very clear path to the Cop to be able to cooperate and work as we have wanted to with all the externalities.”

Kerry also made reference to a potential meeting between the US president, Joe Biden, and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Apec meeting in November, should Xi attend. On Wednesday Kerry pledged to Han they would work closely with him “to help our presidents be able to produce real results”.

On Tuesday, Xi addressed senior members of government at a national ecological conference. He pushed for greater effort on environmental protections and management and urged officials to “build a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system, accelerate the construction of a new power system, and enhance the ability to guarantee national oil and gas security”.

Xi’s speech did not go into specifics, but flagged improvements to “tax policy support” for “green and low-carbon development”.

The leader also reiterated China’s goals for peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and reaching neutrality by 2060, but said “the path towards the goals as well as the manner, pace and intensity of efforts to achieve them should and must be determined by the country itself, rather than swayed by others”, according to a translation by the Sinocism newsletter.