Yellen sees progress in US-China ties at end of Beijing visit

United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said her talks with top Chinese officials in recent days were “direct” and “productive” and helped put the US-China relationship on “surer footing”.

Yellen, who departs Beijing on Sunday, told a news conference that the US and China remained at odds on a number of issues but expressed confidence that her bilateral meetings, which totalled about 10 hours, had advanced Washington’s efforts to stabilise fraught relations between the world’s two biggest economies.“But 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.

Yellen’s four-day visit is Washington’s latest attempt to repair US-China ties, which have been battered over issues from Taiwan to technology and that have drawn allies into their rivalry, affecting companies and trade ties.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing last month in the first visit by the top US diplomat of the Biden presidency, while climate envoy John Kerry is expected to visit China this month.The US diplomatic push comes ahead of a possible meeting between Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, as soon as September’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering scheduled for November in San Francisco.While Yellen’s trip did not produce specific breakthroughs, China’s official Xinhua news agency said late on Saturday that the secretary’s meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng yielded an agreement to “strengthen communication and cooperation on addressing global challenges”.Decoupling would be ‘disastrous’
Yellen said on Sunday the objective of her visit was 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.

“No one visit will solve our challenges overnight. But I expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication,” she said, adding that she expected increased and more regular contact at the staff level.She said Chinese officials raised concerns about an expected executive order restricting outbound investment but she assured them any such measure would be narrow in scope and enacted in a transparent way, through a rule-making process that would allow public input.

Yellen said she told Chinese officials they could raise concerns about US actions, so Washington could explain and, “possibly in some situations, respond to unintended consequences of our actions if they’re not carefully targeted”.

She reiterated that Washington was not seeking to decouple from China’s economy as doing so would be “disastrous for both countries and destabilising for the world”.

But she said the US wanted to see an “open, free and fair economy”, not one that forces countries to take sides.Yellen said she stressed that Washington’s trade curbs, including on China’s access to advanced technology such as semiconductor chips deemed crucial to national security, “are not used by us to gain economic advantage”.

Yellen said she stressed that Washington’s trade curbs, including on China’s access to advanced technology such as semiconductor chips deemed crucial to national security, “are not used by us to gain economic advantage”.

Yellen said she stressed that Washington’s trade curbs, including on China’s access to advanced technology such as semiconductor chips deemed crucial to national security, “are not used by us to gain economic advantage”.