Reuters analyzes US Treasury Secretary’s trip to China.
In a report titled “Yellen’s visit to China had long meetings and a cordial tone but no agreement,” Reuters news agency wrote: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen went to Beijing without any expectations to immediately defuse tensions by meeting with China’s new top economic officials. to reduce the world’s two largest economies, but there was no progress in this journey.
This news agency further wrote that it is not clear whether during these 10-hour meetings, issues such as the control of US technology exports to China, China’s new “anti-espionage” law and other punitive measures of this country against American companies were discussed and not discussed at all. Has anything been done to change the direction of the relationship between the two countries or not?
In this regard, Scott Kennedy, an expert on China’s economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Reuters: The achievement of the meeting was the meeting itself, not specific issues! We have to take into account that the two sides have barely spoken to each other for the past three and a half years, and the level of mistrust and cynicism between them has been very high.
Kennedy said it was important that Yellen and Chinese officials could have a peaceful and substantive discussion of policy differences after years of tension over the Covid-19 pandemic, tariffs, national security, trade restrictions and growing problems for American companies inside China. .
China’s state-run Global Times, on the other hand, described the tone of Yellen’s visit as “pragmatic” and “rational,” but stressed that the “positive” expectations the visit generated were like “a candle in the wind, weak and uncertain.”
This nationalist newspaper stated in the report that “Chinese people are more inclined to believe that the direction of Washington’s policy towards China is still focused on containment and suppression and that no changes have been made by the United States to secure economic and commercial issues. ».
A senior official of the US Treasury Department, who accompanied Yellen on her first trip to China, described the trip as “respectful, frank and constructive” and emphasized the “warm reception” of the American official by the Chinese.
According to the US official, Yellen’s meeting on Saturday with He Lifeng, head of China’s state planning agency known as China’s new economic “tsar”, was scheduled for two hours, but lasted five hours, and then A “cordial” dinner was held, but trade experts told Reuters that after the meetings it was still difficult to see how Washington and Beijing would move toward compromise, but that the two sides would be better off talking.
