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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is wrapping up her second trip to China, where she raised American concerns about Chinese overproduction, warned against support for Russia and, unexpectedly, caused a stir on Chinese social media over her travel style and chopstick-wielding skills.
Over the span of four days, Yellen had wide-ranging meetings with Chinese leaders, local officials, academics, students and American executives both in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou as well as the capital Beijing.
The visit, her second to China in nine months as treasury chief, is aimed at addressing escalating trade disputes between the world’s largest economies as the two sides try to stabilize relations following a summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November.
Despite the overall positive tone of Chinese state media coverage, Yellen had a tough message for Beijing: China’s surging exports of state-subsidized electronic vehicles (EVs), solar panels and batteries are threatening American jobs and businesses, and must be reined in.
At a news conference on Monday, Yellen said she expressed concerns to senior Chinese officials that there are features of the Chinese economy that have “growing negative spillovers” on the US and the world.
“I am particularly worried about how China’s enduring macroeconomic imbalances —namely its weak household consumption and business overinvestment, aggravated by large-scale government support in specific industrial sectors — will lead to significant risk to workers and businesses in the United States and the rest of the world,” she told reporters.
Here are four key takeaways from her trip: