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The U.S. seeks “constructive and fair” economic ties with China, but will protect its national security interests and push back against Chinese actions to dominate foreign competitors, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Yellen laid out the Biden administration’s principal objectives for what she called an “essential” economic relationship between the world’s two largest economies, as China strikes a more confrontational posture toward the United States and its allies.
“Our relationship is clearly at a tense moment,” Yellen said. “My goal is to be clear and honest, to cut through the noise and speak to this essential relationship, based on sober realities.”
She said she intended to travel to Beijing “at the appropriate time” to meet with her new Chinese counterparts to help “responsibly” manage the relationship, but Treasury offered no details on the timing of a trip.
Yellen made her remarks amid heightened tensions and pessimism in the U.S.-China relationship over national security issues, including Taiwan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, growing U.S. export bans on advanced technologies and China’s state-led industrial policies.
