Yellen arrives in China as US seeks to stabilize ties

BEIJING: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a visit aimed at improving communication and stabilizing the tense relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

Janet Yellen’s trip through Sunday is her first to China as treasury secretary and comes just weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a rare visit to the country.

The visit will see her seek to expand lines of correspondence, avoid miscommunications and widen collaboration on the global economy, climate change, debt distress and other issues, according to a Treasury official.

Her trip — which comes in the face of concerns over China’s economic recovery and US interest rate hikes — may also give officials on both sides a chance to speak about their countries’ growth outlooks.

“The fact that she’s spending four days in Beijing, given all of her other domestic and international pressures, underscores the importance she is attaching to this visit,” Asia Society Policy Institute vice-president Wendy Cutler told AFP.

And while each side will have a long list of complaints to raise with the other with little flexibility to adjust their policies, the visit could allow Yellen to lay the groundwork for future collaboration, Cutler added.

Janet Yellen’s trip continues an effort by the United States to reframe US-China ties diplomatically and in other areas, said Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“It’s about managing the new realm of strategic competition,” she said, noting that Janet Yellen has pointed to competition only so far as it implicates security and values like human rights.

With technology export controls and competitive measures “dominating the economic policy agenda now, I think there’s a real role to explain and communicate what the purpose of these measures really is”, she said.

Underscoring the challenges Janet Yellen will face, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US administration is mulling restricting Chinese companies’ access to US cloud-computing services provided by companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

Ahead of the trip, Beijing appears to have adopted reciprocal actions such as new export controls on metals key to semiconductor manufacturing, underscoring that a shift in relations could take time.

Details of her talks have not been announced, but analysts are watching closely for potential meetings with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who succeeded top economic official Liu He.

Tensions remain over a host of economic issues, including possible plans by President Joe Biden’s administration to restrict certain outbound investments involving sensitive technology that could impact China.

Washington also has concerns over Beijing’s “coercive actions and non-market economic practices”, and plans to push for corrective actions, according to the Treasury official.

Although top American officials have stressed that Washington is not looking to decouple from China — and instead is pushing to “de-risk” — it remains unclear if Beijing will be convinced of a shift in US policy.

There are, however, areas like debt distress where cooperation appears more likely.