Chinese officials are again challenging President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE on climate change, this time taking aim at the Republican’s claim that Beijing invented global warming as a “hoax” to hurt the United States.

A top Chinese diplomat noted in a briefing with reporters that two former Republican U.S. presidents were originally behind international climate change work, not China.

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China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, said during a climate conference in Morocco that Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush supported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) before China even joined international negotiations on climate change, Bloomberg reports.

“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu said.

Trump has said that climate change is a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Once he assumes office in January, Trump will be the only head of state in the world to deny the scientific consensus behind climate change. He’s promised to be hostile toward international climate work, including a landmark agreement to cut global greenhouse gas emissions.

Chinese officials have now criticized Trump three times for his position on climate change. Twice before this month’s presidential election, China rebuked his climate agenda.

Liu said China will continue to fight climate change “whatever the circumstances,” Bloomberg reported.

China’s insistence on tackling global warming, combined with Trump’s opposition to that work, raises the possibility the United States could be isolated in climate diplomacy on the world stage.

“It is a new world order,” Erik Solheim, the head of the United Nations Environment Program, told The New York Times on Tuesday.

“Leadership on climate change policy has now gone to the developing countries, China among them.”