U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is about to go to Beijing this week, the United States mentioned Sunday, marking the second journey by a Cabinet official to China since ties between the world’s high two economies deteriorated earlier this yr.
Yellen is predicted to debate together with her counterparts the significance for each nations “to responsibly manage our relationship, communicate directly about areas of concern, and work together to address global challenges,” mentioned the U.S. Treasury Department in an announcement.
Yellen’s deliberate July 6-9 journey comes simply weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken met China’s high chief President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing in June.
Blinken was the highest-ranking U.S. official to go to the Chinese capital in almost 5 years, and Xi mentioned on the uncommon journey that he noticed headway within the strained relationship between Washington and Beijing.
In Beijing, Yellen will talk about how the U.S. views its financial relationship with China, a senior U.S. Treasury official mentioned Sunday.
She will meet with senior Chinese officers and main U.S. corporations, the American spokesperson mentioned with out offering specifics.
While the U.S. seeks to safe its nationwide safety pursuits and defend human rights, actions to this impact are “not intended to gain economic advantage over China,” the official added.
Washington additionally appears towards “healthy” ties with Beijing and doesn’t search to decouple the economies, whereas pursuing cooperation on pressing challenges like local weather change and debt misery, the American official mentioned.
The U.S. doesn’t anticipate a “significant breakthrough” from this preliminary journey, nevertheless it does purpose to construct longer-term channels of communication with China, the official added.
Restarting engagement
“I think the U.S. government is clearly trying to put some floor under the deterioration of the economic relationship,” Edward Alden, a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) advised Agence France-Presse (AFP), talking on the Treasury secretary’s intentions to go to China.
A Yellen journey might “restart a steady pattern of engagement at lower levels,” he mentioned, including that the U.S. has shifted from being ambiguous about how far it was supporting decoupling to explicitly adopting a technique of “derisking” as a substitute.
This means “focusing on a narrower range of items that have strategic importance, trying to build fences around those items, but otherwise trying to continue to nurture a reasonably robust U.S.-China economic relationship,” Alden mentioned.
But observers don’t anticipate a fast decision to tensions.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is contemplating a program to limit sure U.S. outbound investments involving delicate know-how with key nationwide safety implications – a problem that has riled Chinese officers.
Other potential sticking factors embody amendments to China’s anti-espionage legislation which not too long ago broadened the definition of spying whereas banning the switch of data regarding nationwide safety – a transfer that has spooked international and home companies.
The senior U.S. Treasury official advised reporters Sunday that Washington intends to speak its issues over the legislation.
While vital disagreements will not be resolved in a single journey, the U.S. seeks to deepen and enhance the frequency of communication with China and to “stabilize the relationship,” avoiding miscommunication and increasing collaboration the place potential, the official mentioned.
Global progress, debt issues
For the U.S., discussions with officers from the world’s second-biggest financial system “are important to help spur stronger global economic growth and to tackle the mounting debt problem of the Global South,” mentioned Wendy Cutler, vice chairman on the Asia Society Policy Institute, discussing a potential Yellen go to.
On Beijing’s half, officers are “looking for concrete steps taken by the U.S. to show that ‘decoupling’ and holding back China is not the ultimate goal of the United States,” Cutler added.
But regardless of U.S. insurance policies which have drawn ire from Beijing, officers seemingly have an consciousness of China’s continued export dependence and the significance of the U.S. market, CFR’s Alden mentioned.
“I think that there’s a growing awareness in Beijing that China also needs to play a role in nurturing this economic relationship with the United States, because it’s simply too important to China as well,” he added.
Washington and Beijing not too long ago have clashed over commerce, human rights and different points.
Relations got here beneath additional stress this yr when the U.S. shot down a Chinese balloon it mentioned was used for surveillance – a declare China strongly denied.
But Blinken’s reception in Beijing has been seen as a symbolic signal of reducing temperatures.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
