US commerce chief meets Chinese premier in Beijing
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The meeting between US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (left) and China's Vice-Premier He Lifeng is aimed at boosting business ties.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIJING - United States Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met China’s Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Tuesday, her second full day of talks with top Chinese leaders on balancing business ties and national security concerns.
She is the latest Biden administration official to visit Beijing in a bid to strengthen communications, particularly on economy and defence, as friction between the world’s two largest economies threatens to shake commercial ties.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ms Raimondo told China’s economy czar and her direct counterpart, Mr He Lifeng, that the US does not seek to decouple from its geopolitical rival.
“While we will never compromise in protecting our national security, I want to be clear that we will never seek to decouple or hold China’s economy back,” she said at the meeting in the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital.
A confidant of President Xi Jinping, Mr He took up the post of China’s economy czar in March, having earlier run the powerful state planner.
He replaced former vice-premier Liu He, a Harvard-trained economist and fluent English speaker who had been popular among US officials.
Prior to her meeting with Mr He, Ms Raimondo and Tourism Minister Hu Hepin agreed to hold the 14th China-US Tourism Leadership Summit in China in the first half of 2024.
The step aims to further revive and develop tourism cooperation between the two nations, said the US Commerce Department in a statement.
The last such summit was held in 2019 in Seattle. Before that, it was held every year, alternating between the countries.
Ms Raimondo has made boosting travel and tourism a big part of her trip.
In August, China and the US agreed to double the number of flights permitted between them,
If China returned to 2019 US tourism levels, that would add US$30 billion (S$40.6 billion) to the US economy and 50,000 US jobs, Ms Raimondo said.
Ms Raimondo plans a visit on Wednesday to Shanghai Disneyland, a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Chinese state-owned Shendi Group.
On Monday, she touted a decision by Washington and Beijing to agree to a new formal working group on commercial issues.
US firms have reported growing challenges with operating in China, which has sharply criticised US efforts to block its access to advanced semiconductors.
On Monday, the administration agreed to launch an effort to exchange information on export control enforcement.
The first meeting of the initiative was held on Tuesday at the Commerce Ministry in Beijing, led by Mr Matthew Axelrod, US assistant secretary for export enforcement, the department said.
Such an exchange offered a platform to reduce misunderstandings of US national security policies, Ms Raimondo said on Monday, but added: “We are not compromising or negotiating on matters of national security. Period.”
Mr Xie Feng, China's envoy to the US, welcomed the announcement.
Ms Raimondo and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao had “rational, candid and constructive communication” on China-US economic and trade ties, and issues of common interest, Mr Xie said in a post on X, formerly called Twitter.
Ms Raimondo said on Monday that she had raised concerns about curbs on chipmakers Intel and Micron in the more than four hours of talks with Mr Wang on a range of US business issues.
The trip would have wide benefits for American businesses operating in China, she said.
“We’re delivering. We will have that formal communication,” she said. REUTERS
