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BEIJING, June 27 (TiPost)— U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen may be the next senior official of the Biden administration to visit China following Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Credit：Visual China
Yellen plans to travel to China in early July for the first high-level economic talks with her new Chinese counterpart, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The travel isn’t confirmed yet, and the White House hasn’t finalized an executive order that could reportedly cut off certain American investments in China, neither a timeline for issuance, the report also cited a U.S. official.
China and the U.S. are in touch about dialogue and exchange at various levels, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning responded to the recent report about Yellen’s visit plan at Tuesday’s press, declining to add any details.
Yellen’s trip to China was scheduled earlier this year. Yellen looks forward to traveling to China and to welcoming her counterparts to the United States in the near future, the U.S. Department of Treasury said after Yellen’s first face-to-face talk with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich in January. Liu welcomed Yellen to visit China at an appropriate time this year, and both sides agreed to maintain communication and exchanges between their economic and trade teams to stay in communication across different levels, according to the state media Xinhua News Agency.
However, Yellen’s much-anticipated trip was postponed after the suspected spy balloon incident intensified tension between China and America. The Treasury Secretary repeated in April she planned to travel to China “at the appropriate time.” In a speech delivered the same month, she warned economic decoupling from China “would be disastrous for both countries”, and be destabilizing for the rest of the world.
“What matters is that the U.S. cannot keep raising the issue of communication on the one hand, while on the other, keep suppressing and containing China. The US cannot say one thing but do another,” Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry, commented on the reported U.S. push for calls or meeting with various Chinese officials and the so-called tepid response China showed at a press last month. Wang urged the Biden administration to form a correct perception of China, respect China’s red lines, stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, and work with China in the same direction to bring bilateral relations back on the track of sound and stable growth.
If the latest report is accurate, Yellen is expected to be the official at the Biden administration to visit China second to Blinken. As the highest ranking U.S. official as well as the top U.S. diplomat to visit China since October 2018, Blinken just wrapped up his two-day trip last week. He is also the highest ranking official from the U.S. cabinet to set foot in China since Biden took office in January 2021.
In his meet with Blinken, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that major-country competition does not represent the trend of the times, still less can it solve America’s own problems or the challenges facing the world. Xi called on the U.S. side to remain committed to the common understandings he and President Biden had reached in Bali, and translate the positive statements into actions. Blinken said he had candid and constructive conversations with Wang Yi and Qin Gang, covering a broad range of both bilateral and global issues, according to the U.S. Department of State. Blinken invited Qin to visit U.S. and they agreed to schedule a reciprocal visit at a mutually suitable time, according to the department.
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