US commerce secretary visits Beijing to boost business ties

Receive free updates on U.S.-China relations

we will send you myFT Daily Digest Email summary of the latest information U.S.-China Relations Every morning there is news.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will visit China this week aimed at boosting business ties and tourism between the world’s two largest economies, despite Washington’s ban on U.S. investment in sensitive Chinese technology.

Raimondo, the fourth senior Biden administration official to visit Beijing this summer, said she would stress that the U.S. does not want to “decouple” from the Chinese economy. But she insisted protecting national security was a “top priority”.

“The United States and China have a broad, dynamic, growing economic relationship, one of the largest trade relationships in the world,” Raimondo told reporters ahead of his trip. “Our two countries, and indeed the world, need us to manage this relationship responsibly.”

U.S. President Joe Biden this month announced a ban on U.S. investment in some key Chinese technology industries, including quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence.

The series of high-level visits to China is part of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to ease relations. High-level contacts stalled this year when China launched a so-called spy balloon over U.S. soil.

Raimondo’s trip comes as China’s economy struggles to recover from last year’s pandemic-induced lockdown and the real estate sector has slowed sharply. She said she would be “committed” to boosting travel and tourism between the two countries. She estimated that a return to pre-pandemic levels of Chinese tourists would create tens of thousands of jobs for American workers.

But she warned there were “many challenges” to “doing business in China and exporting to China”, alluding to what she called Beijing’s “unfair trade practices”.

“If you want to put a tagline on this trip and this mission, it’s to protect what we have to do and spread the word where we can,” Raimondo said.

The commerce secretary will face intense skepticism from Chinese officials who question Washington’s sincerity in wanting to improve trade relations as the Biden administration tightens its grip on technology investment.

The restrictions, announced this month and set to take effect next year, are aimed at preventing the Chinese military from gaining access to U.S. money, knowledge and capital. They are expected to affect private equity and venture capital firms, as well as U.S. investors in joint ventures with Chinese companies.

The order is the latest in a series of moves aimed at restricting China’s access to advanced technology, in what U.S. national security adviser Jack Sullivan has dubbed a “small yard, high fence” strategy.

Raimondo’s visit follows recent visits to Beijing by other U.S. Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry.

Yellen told an audience in Beijing during her visit to Beijing in July that despite security tensions, there was “plenty of room” for U.S. and Chinese companies to boost trade and investment.

Chinese media ahead of Raimondo’s visit cited some positive signs in U.S.-China relations, including Washington seeking to extend a decades-long tech deal with China and last week’s lifting of export control restrictions on 27 Chinese entities.

The Global Times, the Communist Party newspaper, quoted China’s Ministry of Commerce as saying: “China will continue to raise relevant economic and trade concerns with the United States, and strive to create a fair and stable business environment for companies to carry out trade and investment cooperation.” As said.

Signs Beijing is open to a thaw in relations and more dialogue could help pave the way for a possible meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, said Brian Mercurio, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ping Road in India next month or the APEC Forum in San Francisco in November.

But Mercurio said the long-term outlook for relations between the two countries is not rosy, with a bitter U.S. election next year in which relations with China will become a contentious issue.

“They can work things out in the short term before Biden and President Xi meet, but in the long run, is there any sign that the two are going to get closer? I would say that, if anything, the situation is exactly Instead,” Mercurio said.