The US Treasury Secretary will visit Beijing to ease tensions

In an attempt to further thaw relations between China and the United States, US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, will travel to Beijing this week to meet with members of the Chinese administration and representatives of American companies in the country.

Yellen’s visit comes weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, a visit marred by later remarks from US President Joe Biden, who called Xi a “dictator”.

Planned expansion of July 6 to 9The visit to Yellen will be only the second by a member of the US presidential cabinet in more than five years, following Blinken’s trip in June. The relations between the two countries, already strained due to the competition for the position of the world’s first power, it got worse at the beginning of the year after the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States. Furthermore, there is unrest on the Chinese side caused by US attempts to restrict Beijing’s access to certain technologies.

extensive agenda

Thus, one of the items on Yellen’s agenda could be the ban imposed by Beijing the use of microchips by the North American company Micron in the country, imposed in the month of May. Beijing then adopted the ban in response to US efforts to limit the export of US technology to China. This question remains at the heart of US concerns, as Blinken acknowledged last week: “How is it going to be in our interest to let them get technology that they can change and use against us?”

“I hope to re-establish contact with the trip to China” Yellen said. For the finance minister, the two countries should talk “about their disagreements so that there are no misunderstandings, so that the intentions of the other are not misinterpreted.” In addition, Yellen will try to convince Beijing that restrictions on technology exports should not continue.