By Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with China’s central bank governor Yi Gang and former economy tsar Liu He for informal talks on the global, U.S., and Chinese economies on Friday, according to a U.S. Treasury official
Yellen comes to Beijing seeking to ease tensions between the world’s two superpowers, although expectations are low, with officials from both sides accepting that safeguarding national security interests now trumps deepening economic ties.
The official said Yellen and her Chinese interlocutors had a “substantive conversation,” without giving any further details.
Although now retired, Liu is a close confidant of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and their meeting follows up on discussions held in Zurich in January.
“We seek a healthy economic competition that benefits American workers and firms and to collaborate on global challenges,” Yellen wrote on Twitter shortly after arriving in Beijing on Thursday night.
“We will take action to protect our national security when needed, and this trip presents an opportunity to communicate and avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding,” Yellen wrote.
China hopes the U.S. would take “concrete actions” to create a favourable environment for the healthy development of bilateral economic and trade ties, China’s finance ministry said in a statement on Friday.
“No winners emerge from a trade war or from decoupling and ‘breaking chains’,” the statement added.
U.S. firms in China hope Yellen’s visit will ensure trade and commercial lanes between the two economies remain open, regardless of the temperature of geo-political tensions.
“Yellen’s visit is significant because it allows more conversations to happen, it allows more mid-level folks from both sides to come,” said Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
“I think if there was another year of no visits by top U.S. government leaders, the market would get colder,” he added.
(Reporting by Joe Cash, Ellen Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Kim Coghill)
