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The United States has taken “important steps” to stabilize relations with China, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at the end of her six-day visit designed to ease tensions with the United States’ main economic rival.
During her trip to Guangzhou and Beijing, Yellen met with He Lifeng, a top economic official, Li Qiang, President Xi Jinping’s number two, and central bank governor Pan Gongsheng. U.S. officials said the talks ranged from China’s manufacturing overcapacity to the financial stability of the world’s second-largest economy.
“It is undeniable that US-China relations are on a stronger footing today than at the same time last year,” Yellen said at the end of her second official Treasury visit to China.
“This wasn’t preordained. It was a direct result of President Biden’s guidance to me and his Cabinet to step up our diplomacy with China and end the relationship.”
Despite the cordial tone of the talks, tensions remain between Washington and Beijing, with Biden expected to warn Xi against meddling in the South China Sea later this week.
Yellen’s trip follows a flurry of high-level contacts between the two sides in recent weeks. These included a phone call between Biden and Xi and a trip by US CEOs to Beijing to meet the Chinese leader.
The Treasury has called on China to stop overly subsidizing its green technology industry – a situation that US officials say risks flooding global markets with cheap solar panels, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries. “China is now simply too big for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity,” Yellen said Monday.
It was unclear what actions, if any, China would take to address U.S. concerns. State media has criticized U.S. and European accusations of oversupply as hypocritical.
Much of the China coverage has focused on Yellen’s visits to Chinese restaurants, her use of chopsticks and her friendliness. But the nationalist Global Times says many Chinese “don’t accept it.”
“The United States has not stopped its negative actions against China, with a series of economic, trade and technological containment actions against China, and an ever-growing list of sanctions against Chinese companies,” he said, asking Washington to take “concrete “actions” to support its “credibility”.