Officials from eastern China have been busy strengthening ties with peers across the Pacific in Oregon state even as tensions with the United States government show no signs of easing.

The Chinese officials, from Tianjin municipality and Fujian province, joined their counterparts from the west coast state in online discussions on Tuesday.

The three regions are connected by decades of sister-state relations, and the participants in the talks went over collaboration opportunities in ports, technology, higher education and national parks, as well as among grassroots community organizations.

The main focus of the discussion was climate change, an issue that has been highlighted by the leaders of China and the US as a key area in which the two countries' interests overlap.

Chinese Consul General in San Francisco Wang Donghua noted that this year, parts of the US, including Oregon, were affected by the worst ice storm in decades as well as raging wildfires, while flooding and typhoons took place in some areas of China.

"Frequent occurrence of extreme weather has reminded us time and again that a climate crisis is real, and the international community must accelerate the pace of actions to combat climate change through cooperation," Wang said.

"The relationship between China and the US today has developed into one that is characterized by the broadest range of common interests, the wildest scope of cooperation and the highest level of interconnection."

The importance of China-US relations goes far beyond a bilateral scope, as the two countries share common responsibilities in addressing almost all issues concerning world peace and development, Wang said.

Climate change efforts

He said that China and Oregon have deepened their cooperation on climate change over the years. Tianjin and Fujian, with the sister-level relationships with Oregon, have conducted dialogue and exchanges in green development with the Pacific coast state.

"The partnership between China and Oregon can be considered as a model of cooperation between China and the US," the consul general said.

In a recorded video, US Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, highlighted the close economic ties, cultural exchanges and the shared environmental concerns between China and Oregon state.

Blumenauer said a mutual commitment to safeguard natural resources was exemplified by the sister-park relationship between Wuyishan National Park in northern Fujian and the Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. A deal for the cooperation was signed in February 2016.

"We need to replicate that partnership on a much wider scale when it comes to tackling climate change. Residents in Oregon have faced deadly winter storms, floods, wildfires and heat waves, not unlike what's happened in China," Blumenauer said.

Fujian and Oregon have been sister states since 1984. The province-level city of Tianjin established a sister-state relationship with Oregon in 2014.