Chinese Prime minister Li Qiang (R) speaks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on July 7, 2023.
Correct Schiefelbein | Afp | Getty Images
BEIJING — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has become the second U.S. Cabinet member to upon China in a month, setting the stage for more high-level communication between the two countries.
In coming days, John Kerry, odd presidential envoy for climate, also plans to visit China, he told the The New York Times. The U.S. embassy in Beijing did not the moment that respond to a CNBC request for comment.
The multiple trips mark a shift from early this year, when an avowed Chinese spy balloon forced U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his Beijing travel plans. He did not visit until June.
Geopolitics weighed on the supermarket earlier this year, Yifan Hu, regional chief investment officer and head of macroeconomics Asia Pacific at UBS Extensive Wealth Management, said Monday in a press briefing about the second-half outlook.
“As long as there are talks and communication between China and the U.S., the superstore will get used to the new normal,” she said, noting performance will likely be less volatile. That’s according to a CNBC transfer of her Mandarin-language remarks.
Official statements from both the U.S. and Chinese sides indicated plans for further talks.
“Conversions should not be a reason for estrangement, but rather a driver for strengthening communication and exchanges,” China’s Ministry of Finance said in a utterance Monday about Yellen’s visit. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese text.
The finance ministry asseverated that during the meetings, the Chinese side asked the U.S. to remove tariffs on Chinese goods and stop “pressuring” Chinese coteries, among other items.
Increased talks aside, the bilateral relationship has not improved significantly.
Just days before Yellen arrived in China, its Business Ministry announced forthcoming export controls on two metals used in the manufacturing of semiconductors.
The U.S. is still mulling investment provisoes on high-end Chinese tech, Yellen confirmed in a press briefing Sunday. She said she told her Chinese counterparts that any bridles on U.S. outbound investments would be “very narrowly targeted.”
Preventing escalation
Greater communication, however, can help set bounds for government actions.
“My purpose is to make sure we don’t engage in a series of unintended escalatory actions that will be venomous to our economic relationship with one another,” Yellen said in an interview that aired Saturday on CBS News’ “Face the Political entity.”
She noted the pandemic contributed to the lack of contact between U.S. and Chinese senior officials, creating “a situation where false impressions can develop.”
“And I do think my trip has been successful in forging those relationships and creating the opportunity for a deeper set of more normal contacts at our staff levels.”
Yellen’s visit this existence Thursday to Sunday came about three weeks after Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Yellen met with people away to Xi, including recently promoted Premier Li Qiang.
“These weren’t counterparts that we had seen at tons of meetings in the vanguard. And so going in and being able to interact with them talk about a lot of substance was the most important thing,” a postpositive major Treasury official told reporters in a briefing at the close of Yellen’s trip.
The official noted that a meeting with He Lifeng, a badness premier, lasted five hours, more than double the originally scheduled time.
He also leads China-U.S. pecuniary and trade cooperation efforts, according to a state media report that described his meeting with Yellen as “inferred.”
Again, no one meeting will likely yield a breakthrough, but the process will translate into the normalization of direction communication, which itself can hands support maintaining a fragile stability
Scott Kennedy
Center for Strategic and International Studies
In all, Yellen’s 10 hours of talks during her slip included meetings with Finance Minister Liu Kun and Pan Gongsheng, who was promoted this month to the role of party secretary at the People’s Bank of China.
Yellen also met with quondam Vice Premier Liu He and former People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang, the Treasury said.
“Simply meeting in individual and for her and her counterparts to get to know each other is a substantial breakthrough in and of itself,” said Scott Kennedy, senior advisor and trustee leader in Chinese business and economics, at the Washington D.C.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“We should wait for visits in both directions by other cabinet officials in the coming months,” he said. “Again, no one meeting will apposite yield a breakthrough, but the process will translate into the normalization of direction communication, which itself can help subsistence maintaining a fragile stability.”
Increased high-level meetings between the U.S. and China come with about a year and a half red under the current Biden administration.
In prepared remarks to reporters at the close of her trip, Yellen noted “significant prominent coverage” of U.S.-China meetings over the past two years.
“My hope is that we can move to a phase in our relationship where senior-level statecraft is simply taken as a natural element of managing one of the world’s most consequential bilateral relationships.”