Raimondo brings carrot, stick to China talks
$700 bln in two-way trade, commerce at stake in US-China relations.
United States Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo kicked off a four-day trip to China with an agreement to establish commercial working groups to better manage trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
“We believe a strong Chinese economy is good thing. We seek healthy competition with China. A growing Chinese economy that plays by the rules is in both of our interests,” Raimondo said in remarks to reporters in Beijing.
Raimondo told her counterpart Commerce Minister Wang Wentao there was “no room to compromise or negotiate” on US national security concerns but noted “the vast majority of our trade and investment relationship” is non-controversial.
The US and China have agree to set up two working groups to help manage differences over trade and export controls, a move welcomed by US businesses but criticized by Republicans back home.
In May, Wang had visited the US where he met with Raimondo to exchange views on trade and commercial tensions. Wang described the new export control working group as an “enforcement information exchange” to “reduce misunderstanding of US national security policies,” Newsweek reported.
Noting the working groups would only meet once or twice a year, “we need a much more substantial, permanent arrangement,” Stephen Roach, former chair of Morgan Stanley’s Asia operations, said on CNBC. Roach, now a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, has warned of a new Cold War developing between China and the US.
In Beijing on Monday, Raimondo discussed with Minister Wang concerns about restrictions China has placed on US companies, notably Intel and Micron Technology, according to the Reuters news service. China has imposed a ban on purchases of memory chips by Micron.
Raimondo also discussed China’s export controls on gallium and germanium, two minerals essential for production of electric vehicles.
Amid a weak post-pandemic re-opening, China’s economic growth has slowed to about 5 percent annually, low for China but still faster than most developed nations. A real estate debt crisis, widespread youth unemployment, slow corporate earnings and weakening consumer spending are seen as drags. Western economists and bankers have been calling on Beijing to address the slowdown.
Raimondo is the fourth senior Biden administration official to visit Beijing in recent months. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and presidential climate envoy John Kerry have all made the trek Beijing to try to improve US-China communications.
The establishment of the two working groups sets up a potential process for resolving some of the challenges facing the US and China.
State taps Lambert for ‘China House’
The US State Department has tapped veteran diplomat Mark Lambert to be its top China policy official, Reuters reported late Monday citing five persons familiar with the matter.
Lambert is to be named deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, filing a post vacated in June by Rick Waters who had served as head of State’s Office of China Coordination, known as ‘China House,’ Reuters reported.
Lambert had previously served in the US embassy in Beijing and was most recently deputy assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs. He reports to Assistant Secretary Daniel Kritenbrink.
7th Fleet cmdr calls out China
Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, commander of the US Navy’s 7th fleet based in Japan, over the weekend called out China’s “aggressive behavior” in the South China Sea.
China’s actions must be challenged and checked, Thomas said in remarks on Sunday offered as assurance to the Philippines after a Chinese coast guard vessel fired a water cannon against a Philippine vessel on August 5.
“You have to challenge people, I would say operating in a grey zone. When they’re taking a little bit more and more and pushing you, you’ve got to push back, you have to sail and operate,” Thomas said in an interview with Reuters in Manila.
Thomas took an aerial tour of disputed shoals in the South China Sea and met with his Philippine counterpart Vice-Admiral Alberto Carlos.
President Joe Biden and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met at the White House earlier this year to discuss security cooperation in the Pacific.
— By William Roberts