Beijing and Washington Confirm Yellen Will Visit China This Week

BEIJING, July 3 (TiPost)— China and U.S. governments confirmed that another senior official of the Biden administration will visit China after Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Credit：Xinhua News Agency

As agreed between China and the United States, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit China from July 6-9, China’s Ministry of Finance said Monday. Secretary Yellen will travel to Beijing from July 6-9 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, according to a statement of U.S. Department of the Treasury. While not disclosing any details about Yellen’s schedule, the statement reiterated three principles guiding America’s economic relationship with China that Yellen laid out in an April’s speech: First, seeking to secure U.S. national security interests along with those of its allies and to protect human rights through targeted actions that are not intended to gain economic advantage; Second, seeking a healthy economic relationship with China that fosters mutually beneficial growth and innovation and expands economic opportunity for American workers and businesses; Finally, seeking to cooperate on urgent global challenges like climate change and debt distress.

Yellen is set to be the second official of Biden’s cabinet to travel to China in less than one month. Blinken wrapped up his two-day trip two weeks ago, which made him the highest ranking U.S. official as well as the top U.S. diplomat to visit China since October 2018 October 2018 by his predecessor Mike Pompeo. He is also the highest ranking official from the U.S. cabinet to set foot in China since Biden took office in January 2021.

The U.S. Department of Treasury first suggested Yellen’s visit is on the horizon after her first face-to-face talk with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich in January. However, the trip was postponed after the suspected spy balloon incident intensified tension between China and America.

Yellen repeated in April that she planned to travel to China “at the appropriate time.” In a speech addressed the same month, she warned economic decoupling from China “would be disastrous for both countries”, and be destabilizing for the rest of the world. Yellen cautioned about cutting ties with China again last month. “While we surely have concerns that need to be addressed, decoupling would be a big mistake,” Yellen said in her testimony before the House Financial Services Committee.

Recently, the U.S. government sought to strengthen the high-level communication while the new curbs on China’s tech industry is mulling.  Yellen was said last week to plan to a travel to China in early July for the first high-level economic talks with new Chinese counterpart. White House is reportedly working to draft an executive order that could cut off certain U.S. investments in China and aims to issue as early as late July.

“I hope my travelling to China is to reestablish contact with their new group of leaders. We’ll need to get know one another,” Yellen replied to a question about her scheduled trip right after the abovementioned report. Yellen also called for a better Sino-US relationship. “We believe a healthy economic relationship, health completion is benefits for both American businesses and workers and Chinese businesses and workers. This is something that is possible and desirable,” she said. “We really welcome and want to have a healthy economic relationship, and we think it’s generally beneficial. “  

更多精彩内容，关注钛媒体微信号（ID：taimeiti），或者下载钛媒体App

​Read More