US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen kicked off a four-day visit to Beijing on Friday by calling for market reforms in the world’s second-largest economy and warning that the United States and its allies will fight back against what she called China’s “unfair economic practices.”
Yellen made the remarks at a meeting with US companies doing business in China after a morning meeting with former Chinese economy czar Liu He, a close confidante of President Xi Jinping. She slated to meet later with Premier Li Qiang.
Yellen’s trip part of a flurry of visits aimed at calming tensions between Washington and Beijing after the US military shot down a Chinese government balloon over the United States.
The US diplomatic push comes ahead of a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and Xi as soon as September’s Group of 20 Summit in New Delhi or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering scheduled for November in San Francisco.
Regular exchanges could help both countries monitor economic and financial risks at a time when the global economy was facing “headwinds like Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the pandemic,” Yellen added.
Janet Yellen said she would make clear to Chinese officials that Washington was not seeking “a wholesale separation of our economies,”.
But would raise concerns about their use of expanded subsidies for state-owned enterprises and domestic firms, barriers to market access for foreign firms, and recent “punitive actions” against US firms.