US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said in an interview that aired on Wednesday that she hopes to travel to China to “re-establish contact” with Beijing, despite differences between the two countries.
Tensions between China and the US have soared in recent years, with US President Joe Biden and his predecessor, former US president Donald Trump, calling Beijing the most serious threat to long-term US global primacy.
However, the Biden administration has recently sought to dial down the heat, with Yellen telling MSNBC that her hopes in “traveling to China is to re-establish contact.”
Photo: Reuters
“There are a new group of leaders, we need to get to know one another,” she said, declining to give an exact date for an expected visit to Beijing, which Bloomberg has reported would take place early next month.
Deepening China-US discord are Washington’s bans of exports of high-end semiconductors and other trade curbs on the rising power.
Yellen acknowledged in the interview that the two countries have disagreements, saying that the US would continue to defend its national security interests.
“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,” Yellen said.
However, Yellen added that economic competition would benefit both countries.
“Healthy competition that benefits both American businesses and workers and Chinese businesses and workers, this is something that is both possible and desirable,” she said.
Yellen’s reported trip to China comes on the heels of another visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing this month — the first by a secretary of state in nearly five years.
That visit saw Blinken meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who said the two powers had “made progress and reached agreement” on unspecified issues.
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