US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen yesterday said 10 hours of meetings with senior Chinese officials over the past few days were “direct” and “productive,” helping to stabilize the superpowers’ often rocky relationship as her four-day Beijing trip ended.
Before departing China, Yellen said Washington and Beijing remained at odds on a number of issues, but expressed confidence that her visit had advanced efforts to put the relationship on “surer footing.”
“The US and China have significant disagreements,” Yellen told a news conference at the US embassy in Beijing, citing Washington’s concerns about what she called “unfair economic practices” and recent punitive actions against US firms.
Photo: AFP
“But [US] President [Joe] Biden and I do not see the relationship between the US and China through the frame of great power conflict. We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive,” she said.
With US-China relations at a low over national security issues, including Taiwan, US export bans on advanced technologies and China’s state-led industrial policies, Washington has been trying to repair ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing last month, the first trip by the top US diplomat during Biden’s presidency. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is expected to visit this month.
Yellen said her visit aimed to establish and deepen ties with China’s new economic team, reduce the risk of misunderstanding and pave the way for cooperation in areas such as climate change and debt distress.
“I do think we’ve made some progress, and I think we can have a healthy economic relationship that benefits both of us and the world,” she said, adding that she expected increased and more regular communications at the staff level.
Briefing reporters after the visit, a senior US Department of the Treasury official said the trip as expected did not result in specific policy breakthroughs, but was “very successful” in terms of “re-establishing contact” and building relationships.
She said that Chinese officials raised concerns about an expected US executive order restricting outbound investment, but she assured them any such measure would be narrow in scope and enacted in a transparent way.
She reiterated that Washington was not seeking to decouple from China’s economy, as doing so would be “disastrous for both countries and destabilizing for the world.”
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