Biden’s commerce secretary is the latest Cabinet member to visit China in a bid for improved ties

WASHINGTON – Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is the latest member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet to visit China as his management tries to mend the deteriorating ties between the global’s two greatest economies. She guarantees to be “practical” with out compromising the U.S. push to “responsibly” arrange that financial courting.

Raimondo plans conferences with Chinese officers and U.S. industry leaders in Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to “promote a healthy competition, a competition on a level playing field, playing by the rules.”

“I’m also very realistic and clear-eyed about the challenges. And the challenges are significant,” she advised journalists ahead of leaving Washington on Saturday on a shuttle that ends Wednesday.

The secretary stated she desires to in finding “actionable, concrete steps where we can move forward on the commercial relationship,” however she introduced few main points. One topic to be mentioned is selling Chinese travel and tourism to the United States, with Raimondo noting the fresh easing of restrictions on huge Chinese teams visiting the U.S.

Raimondo’s visit, like the July shuttle by means of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is supposed to display the management’s willingness to spouse with China on financial building at a time of escalating tensions on overseas coverage and nationwide safety and as Washington bolsters alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the European Union.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a two-day stop in Beijing in June, the highest-level conferences in China in the previous 5 years. Blinken met with President Xi Jinping and the two agreed to stabilize U.S.-China ties, however higher communications between their militaries may now not be agreed upon.

There are divisions round the economic system, too, specifically after the imposition of U.S. foreign investment controls that experience stung a large number of Chinese firms. China has accused the U.S. of “using the cover of ‘risk reduction’ to carry out ‘decoupling and chain-breaking,’” and has higher its personal business in Asia.

The controls pertain to complicated pc chips, microelectronics, quantum information applied sciences and synthetic intelligence. The U.S. says the effort stemmed from nationwide safety targets fairly than financial pursuits, and that the classes coated have been deliberately slender.

The U.S. strikes are supposed to blunt China’s skill to use American investments in its era firms to improve its army, whilst maintaining broader ranges of business which can be essential to each countries. But China’s Ministry of Commerce stated it has “serious concern” about Biden’s executive order.

Raimondo stated the U.S. was once now not in “containing China’s economic development.”

“We want the Chinese economy to prosper. We do not want to contain or hold back China,” she stated. “We do need to protect our national security, and we’re going to use our export controls to the fullest extent possible to do that.”

She stated makes an attempt to spice up the U.S. economic system by means of selling production, a centerpiece of Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign, “does not mean, at all, that we want to decouple from China’s economy. And I plan to make that very clear in my meetings.”

“The U.S. and China share a large, dynamic, growing economic relationship,” Raimondo said. “And both of our countries — in fact, the entire world — need us to manage that relationship responsibly.”

Raimondo added that she is looking for “to have a stable commercial relationship, and the core to that is regular communication.”

“It’s hard to solve problems in any relationship if you don’t communicate. And lack of communication results in rising tensions and a spiral to a bad place,” Raimondo stated.

China’s Ministry of Commerce has stated Raimondo’s visit got here at the invitation of Minister Wang Wentao. China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin stated at Friday news convention, when requested about Raimondo’s travels, that “China and the US are in touch about bilateral engagement and exchange.”

Biden stated at a fresh fundraiser in Utah for his reelection marketing campaign that China was once a “ticking time bomb.”

“They have got some problems. That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” the president stated, pointing to China’s fresh declines in growth rates.

Raimondo stated she spoke with Biden ahead of leaving for China and that he requested her to put across the message that there’s “benefit to communicating to reduce tensions.”

“That does not mean compromise,” stated Raimondo, who added: “I’m not going to pull my punches, but I intend to be practical.”

The commerce secretary stated she spoke ahead of her shuttle with best U.S. exertions leaders and greater than 100 business executives who’re nervous to do industry with China however have been “increasingly concerned” by means of the nation’s nonmarket practices, which makes competing for world industry tricky.

“We all know that China has not followed through on the economic reforms that it has promised,” Raimondo said. “And it’s clearly continuously committed to using non-market trade and investment practices, and that forces us to defend our businesses and workers.”