U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Travel to China to “Manage” Ties with Beijing

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to travel to Beijing this week, making her the second high-ranking official to visit China in recent weeks in an effort to stabilize relations between the two countries.

During her visit to Beijing, Yellen plans to meet with senior Chinese government officials to discuss the U.S.-China relationship and address “areas of concern,” such as human rights abuses, China’s ban on a U.S.-based memory chip manufacturer, and climate change, the Treasury Department said.

It is unclear which Chinese government officials Yellen will be meeting with. However, a senior Treasury official said she is not expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“My hope in traveling to China is to re-establish contact,” Yellen said about her trip. “There are a new group of leaders, we need to get to know one another.”

The two nations “need to discuss our disagreements with one another so that we don’t have misunderstandings, don’t misunderstand one another’s intentions,” she added.

Yellen’s trip comes a few weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in an effort to maintain a stable relationship between the world's two largest economies.

Blinken met with Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, where the two agreed to get along and re-establish dialogue between the U.S. and China.

However, no major breakthroughs were achieved as the two sides continued to “profoundly disagree” on several issues, including Taiwan, the chip industry, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and human rights.

Blinken was the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit China since 2018. His trip had originally been intended for February but was postponed after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was intercepted flying through U.S. airspace.

The U.S. The Treasury said it doesn’t expect significant breakthroughs with Yellen’s visit, but hopes that the trip will build additional channels of communication with the Chinese government to discuss the bilateral economic relationship between the two countries.