US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen is to travel to Beijing on Thursday as part of an ongoing effort to thaw US-China relations, a senior Us Department of the Treasury official said on Sunday.
Yellen, who has called the notion of an economic decoupling from China “disastrous,” has frequently said in the past year that she would like to visit China.
She says the two nations “can and need to find a way to live together” in spite of their strained relations over geopolitics and economic development.
Photo: Reuters
Yellen is to meet with Chinese officials and US companies doing business in China, and would stay until Sunday, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the trip.
The goal of her visit is to deepen and increase the frequency of communication between the US and China, the official said.
While there are clear areas of common interest where Yellen can make progress, the official said, there are also significant disagreements that would not be resolved in a single trip.
The most recent flare-up came when US President Joe Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) as a “dictator” during a campaign fundraiser last month.
China protested loudly, but Biden later said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”
The US president’s statements came after tensions over a Chinese surveillance balloon that the US government shot down, US-led restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors and ongoing tensions about Taiwan.
Yellen’s trip would follow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day stop in Beijing last month, the highest-level meetings in China in the past five years. Blinken met with Xi and the two agreed to stabilize deteriorated US-China ties, but better communications between their militaries could not be agreed upon.
US treasury officials did not specify which officials Yellen would meet, but said it would not be Xi.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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