Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to go to China

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to China this week and will meet with senior government officials, as well as U.S. firms doing business in China. 

Her visit builds on President Biden’s directive after his meeting last year with President Xi Jinping to deepen communications between the world’s two largest economies, a senior Treasury official said Sunday. Yellen does not expect to meet directly with Xi, the official said.

But at a fundraiser in June, Mr. Biden equated Xi to “dictators,” sparking the ire of the Chinese. Beijing’s foreign ministry responded by calling Mr. Biden’s comments “ridiculous” and amounted to “open political provocation.”

Yellen will be traveling from July 6-9. While in Beijing, Yellen will discuss with officials the importance of the two countries to manage relationships, communicate directly on areas of concern, and work together to address global challenges. The senior Treasury official said the secretary has no intention of shying away from U.S. views on human rights, and it’s a topic that will likely come up during the visit.

In April, Yellen laid out how the U.S. views the three pillars of the U.S.-China bilateral economic relationship in a speech. Those pillars are: the U.S. taking targeted action to secure national security interests and will protect human rights; the U.S. seeking a healthy economic relationship with China, not a decoupling, but the U.S. will respond with allies to unfair practices by China; and third, the U.S. wants to cooperate on challenges of the day including on the global economy, combating climate change, and debt.

Yellen’s visit to China comes after the secretary has said numerous times that she hoped to go to China when it is appropriate. In an interview just last week, Yellen said her hope in traveling to China is to reestablish contact.

“What I’ve tried to make clear is that the United States is taking actions and will continue to take actions intended to protect our national security interest. And we’ll do that even if it imposes some economic cost on us, but we believe that a healthy economic relationship, healthy competition that benefits both American businesses and workers and Chinese businesses and workers, this is something that is possible and desirable that we really welcome and want to have, a healthy economic relationship, and we think it’s generally beneficial,” Yellen said on MSNBC.

Yellen’s trip also comes on the heels of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to the country in June, which included a meeting with Xi and other high-ranking government officials. 

Blinken’s high-profile trip came months after a trip scheduled for February had to be postponed amid the fallout from the U.S. military shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.