US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said competition between the world’s biggest economies is not a “winner-take-all” situation, and called for both sides to manage their rivalry with a fair set of rules.
Yellen’s comments were delivered Friday during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang as she made a long-anticipated trip to Beijing, aimed at finding some common ground between the two superpowers sparring on everything from trade to Taiwan’s security. “We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time,” the treasury chief told China’s No. 2 official, adding that US actions to protect national security should be “targeted” Li also struck a note of optimism, telling Yellen he believed bilateral ties would eventually see a “rainbow,” after going through a period of “wind and rain.” He also urged Chinese entrepreneurs to brace for “hardships” and “look further to the horizon.”
Yellen’s high-stakes visit comes as the US and China are locked in a tit-for-tat trade war that ramped up last year with US export controls on semiconductors and chipmaking equipment. The Biden administration is preparing an executive order curbing US outbound investment in China, which could come as soon as July and cover certain investments in sensitive technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. President Xi Jinping’s government imposed controls on two critical minerals used in advanced technologies days before Yellen’s arrival. Earlier in the day, she told a roundtable of US business people operating in China she was “concerned” by those controls.
Yellen’s comments were delivered Friday during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang as she made a long-anticipated trip to Beijing, aimed at finding some common ground between the two superpowers sparring on everything from trade to Taiwan’s security. “We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time,” the treasury chief told China’s No. 2 official, adding that US actions to protect national security should be “targeted” Li also struck a note of optimism, telling Yellen he believed bilateral ties would eventually see a “rainbow,” after going through a period of “wind and rain.” He also urged Chinese entrepreneurs to brace for “hardships” and “look further to the horizon.”
Yellen’s high-stakes visit comes as the US and China are locked in a tit-for-tat trade war that ramped up last year with US export controls on semiconductors and chipmaking equipment. The Biden administration is preparing an executive order curbing US outbound investment in China, which could come as soon as July and cover certain investments in sensitive technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. President Xi Jinping’s government imposed controls on two critical minerals used in advanced technologies days before Yellen’s arrival. Earlier in the day, she told a roundtable of US business people operating in China she was “concerned” by those controls.