US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen yesterday told Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) that Washington is not seeking a “winner-take-all” competition, in a visit to Beijing aimed at stabilizing fraught ties.
Yellen’s four-day trip is her first as Treasury head to China, with which the US is butting heads over trade curbs, human rights and a litany of other disputes.
However, Washington is working to dial down the temperature, and Yellen yesterday underscored to Li that the US does not seek an economic showdown.
Photo: AFP
“We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all, but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time,” she told Li at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
The US has said it is seeking to “de-risk” from China by limiting the world’s second-largest economy’s access to advanced technology deemed crucial to Washington’s national security.
Yellen underlined to Li that while Washington would “in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security,” that should not derail ties.
“We may disagree in these instances,” she said. “We should not allow any disagreement to lead to misunderstandings that needlessly worsen our bilateral economic and financial relationship.”
Highlighting the challenges, just days before Yellen’s visit, Beijing unveiled new export controls on metals key to semiconductor manufacturing on national security grounds, in the latest salvo in the chips war.
Yellen yesterday told US businesspeople that Washington was “concerned” about the curbs.
She said that Washington was not seeking a “wholesale separation of our economies.”
“A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy,” Yellen told a meeting with representatives of US business at a session hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in the capital.
AmCham president Michael Hart, who met with Yellen, said: “We’re hoping that she would set the tone.”
“The hope is that following her visit, there would be more visits” both ways, he added.
Despite tensions, Beijing has struck an optimistic tone about the visit.
Li told Yellen that China could see the relationship recovering after a difficult period.
“Yesterday, the moment you arrived at our airport and left the plane, we saw a rainbow,” Li said.
“I think it can apply to the US-China relationship, too: After experiencing a round of winds and rains, we surely can see a rainbow,” he added.
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