Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in an attempt to partially smooth over the increasingly rocky relationship between the world’s two largest economies. Now it’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s turn.
Yellen’s trip to Beijing, this Thursday through Sunday, comes at an especially delicate time in U.S.-China relations. Yellen and her aides are setting a low bar on reaching specific deals. There won’t be any concrete, written agreements between the U.S. and Chinese delegations, and the back-and-forth over export controls, predatory trade practices, and sanctions won’t be resolved.
Unfortunately, the U.S.-China relationship has become so hostile, perhaps even toxic, of late that even talking is difficult. While bilateral trade may have reachedlast year, the U.S. and China view the economic sphere as another front — and perhaps the main front — in their increasingly tense geopolitical rivalry. The Chinese are still smarting over the Biden administration’s October 2022 decision to restrict the export of high-end chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China.
China is retaliating. In April, China issued a new counterespionage law which could bring any U.S. company operating in China under the scrutiny of the Chinese government. In May, Beijing banned U.S. chip maker Micron Technology over undefined national security concerns. And last week, China imposed export controls on raw materials used for semiconductor chip manufacturing, retaliation for what Beijing sees as an ever-tightening U.S.
It’s the foreign policy equivalent of a shoeless balancing act on a 200-foot high beam with shark-infested waters on one side and hellfire on the other. One can only hope the two powers find a way. As hard-line as the rhetoric might get, neither of them want to stumble into a full-blown conflict. Daniel DePetris is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
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