A softer approach by Yellen, but still a tough sell in Beijing

BEIJING – When you have a high-profile relationship that is as consequential yet tense as the one between the United States and China, people often read too much into everything.

During

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit,

it was the quick – and wrong – assumption by some that Beijing had deliberately sent a low-level official to greet him on the tarmac, when in fact it was the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s director-general of North American and Oceanian affairs, as dictated by protocol.