Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she hasn’t yet spoken with her opposite number in China, Vice Premier He Lifeng, as Biden administration officials work to re-engage and ease strains with the world’s second-largest economy.
(Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she hasn’t yet spoken with her opposite number in China, Vice Premier He Lifeng, as Biden administration officials work to re-engage and ease strains with the world’s second-largest economy.
“I haven’t had contact yet with my new counterpart,” Yellen said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television on the sidelines of a Group of Seven meeting of finance officials in Niigata, Japan.
The revelation shows the slow pace in establishing high-level contact between US and Chinese policymakers since President Xi Jinping reorganized his government at the outset of his third term in power in March.
Still, there have been recent signs that contact is increasing. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan sat down with China’s top diplomat for two days of what the White House called “substantive and constructive” meetings, Bloomberg News reported this week.
The Treasury chief said she still hoped to arrange a visit to Beijing.
“I expect to travel there,” she said. “I can’t tell you what the date is. We have a number of senior American officials that are likely to go and we need to sequence them appropriately.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have also been pursuing trips to China. Yellen said she didn’t know which US official might go first.
Yellen met with He’s predecessor, Liu He, in Zurich in January, and the two agreed to arrange for additional meetings in the coming months. Attempts to schedule a Yellen visit to Beijing were derailed after the US shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that had strayed into American airspace in February.
The incident interrupted a short period of warming relations between Washington and Beijing that began when Xi and President Joe Biden met in Bali, Indonesia in November.
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