Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴) and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen privately discussed points of disagreement during a break from official proceedings in their first in-person meeting, a senior Treasury official said.
The meeting is seen as a sign that the world’s top economies are seeking to downplay tensions and spotlight a constructive tone in their discussions.
Wednesday’s meeting, which was only announced two days earlier, was billed by both delegations as a step toward improving dialogue and an opportunity to exchange views over areas of disagreement.
Photo: AP
The official briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity following the talks in Zurich.
An earlier statement from the Treasury called the discussions “candid, substantive and constructive,” and announced plans for Yellen to visit Beijing later this year.
Liu and Yellen retreated to one end of the room after a coffee break, accompanied only by translators who were largely unneeded due to Liu’s command of English, the official said.
After some time, staff members asked the two whether the formal session should restart, but were rebuffed because the private conversation was going so well, the person added.
Later, when talks between the delegations reached the stage at which grievances were due to be aired, Yellen and Liu told the group that there was no need to do so because they had already addressed all the key issues.
The Treasury official did not reveal details about what had been said during the informal portion of the meeting.
Among the contentious issues that had been expected to come up during the meeting were China’s objections to US export and investment controls. The US has angered Beijing in recent months by seeking to deny China access to advanced semiconductors, a technology China has said is crucial to its economic development.
Other key subjects addressed in the talks were US efforts to cool inflation without triggering a recession, and China’s real-estate crunch, the official said.
The pair also discussed the growing problem of heavily indebted low and middle-income countries. Yellen specifically mentioned Zambia, where she is scheduled to visit later this month, the person said.
Zambia is seen as an important test case for the so-called Common Framework, a program organized by wealthy nations to help debtors simultaneously negotiate with their sovereign and private creditors.
The African country defaulted in 2020 and is seeking to restructure about US$12.8 billion in external debt. About one-third of that is owed to China, which has been criticized for delaying the process.
UNCONVINCING: The US Congress questioned whether the company’s Chinese owners pose a national security risk and how the app might influence young users TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew (周受資), confronted with an unforgiving, distrustful US Congress, tried to give answers in his testimony on Thursday that avoided offending either the US government or China. However, his evasiveness left Congress unsatisfied, with representatives hungrier than ever to punish TikTok for ties to its parent company ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), based in Beijing. He did not bring his company any closer to a resolution. Politically, TikTok is in a tougher spot. Its executives had been discussing divesting from ByteDance to resolve US national security concerns, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. However, China this week said
Sanofi SA’s drug Dupixent succeeded in a late-stage trial for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), raising the odds that the blockbuster would be the first biologic medicine cleared to treat the lung disorder. Dupixent, which is already prescribed for asthma and some skin conditions, showed a 30 percent reduction in the rate at which patients’ COPD worsened compared with those who received a placebo during the stage-three Boreas trial, the company said in a statement yesterday. The positive data could herald a new era of cutting-edge treatments for the life-threatening respiratory affliction and provide another major boost in demand for the French
SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT: The international trade group said the sector would recover from a slump, with spending expected to rise 4.2 percent to US$24.9 billion Taiwan is to retain its position as the top spender on semiconductor front-end equipment and facilities next year, with spending expected to increase 4.2 percent year-on-year to US$24.9 billion, international trade group SEMI said yesterday. The spending forecast matches an expected recovery in global semiconductor equipment and facilities investment next year, it said. International equipment spending is to return to growth next year, SEMI said in a report, forecasting 21 percent growth to US$92 billion. The expansion would manly be driven by robust demand for semiconductors in the automotive and high-performance computing segments, the association said. “This quarter’s SEMI World Fab Forecast update
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
RSS