Easing tensions: US Treasury Secretary Yellen’s visit to China

From export restrictions to US President Biden comparing China’s President Xi to a dictator, relations between China and the US are now at an all-time low. In this case, US Treasury Secretary Yellen is going to Beijing.

The audience is seeing the fact that Janet Yellen is coming to China – from both the Chinese and the American side. The US Treasury Secretary’s visit comes despite US President Joe Biden comparing Chinese President Xi Jinping to a dictator and imposing new trade restrictions.

In Beijing, Janet Yellen is seen as a US government official who is not overly confrontational.

China-US cooperation

The US Treasury Secretary repeated his statement in Paris in June that the world’s two largest economies could work together on global issues and certainly contributed to it.

Earlier this year, the US Treasury secretary said the world’s two largest economies had a responsibility to “work together on global issues”. According to Yellen, this aspect is something that can be done and the world expects from them.

Janet Yellen wants four days of talks in China It follows US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in June, another attempt to stabilize already strained relations between the two superpowers.

A tight relationship

The list of issues is long: Chinese human rights abuses, China’s friendship with Russia, the Communist government’s threats to Taiwan, and US restrictions on microchips. The Washington government is trying to block China’s acquisition of high-performance semiconductors. One concern: China could use these for its military.

Therefore, some microchips and the machines that can manufacture them can no longer be exported to China. The Communist state and party leadership is outraged and just days ago introduced export restrictions on two of the world’s most important high-tech products. Starting next month, special licenses will be required to export gallium and germanium from China, the world’s largest producer of these metals.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on Tuesday that the export restrictions on the two products were not discriminatory and did not target any specific country.

Countermeasures in response to US restrictions

But observers clearly see the export restrictions as a countermeasure to US restrictions. In the Communist Party’s propaganda magazine China Daily, former Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo called the measures the first serious blow that could be well thought out.

If restrictions on China’s high-tech sector continue, countermeasures will increase.