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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng on Monday, ahead of Yellen’s scheduled trip to Beijing this weekend. According to Chinese state media, Xie strove to send a “clear and positive message” that China is ready to improve bilateral relations.
Of course, China’s state-run Global Times portrayed the meeting as the pure and virtuous Chinese ambassador explaining to Yellen that Beijing has always done everything right, for all of the right reasons, and it is time for the United States to put aside its irrational obsession with little things such as forced labor, genocide, espionage, territorial aggression, and world-ravaging coronavirus plagues:
During the face-to-face meeting on Monday, Ambassador Xie noted that a healthy and stable China-US relationship is in the common interests of the two countries and is also the common expectation of the international community, according to a statement from the Chinese Embassy in the US.
China has always viewed and handled the bilateral relations in accordance with the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, Xie said.
The Chinese ambassador highlighted the expectation that both sides should strengthen dialogue and carry out cooperation with sincerity, and help China-US relations to stabilize and return to the right track.
The Global Times hopefully recalled Yellen expressing her preference for “constructive” economic relations instead of “decoupling” from China. Communist China’s top international objective at the moment is putting an end to not just “decoupling” but even “de-risking,” a less severe strategy for diversifying supply chains and moving some manufacturing out of China instead of completely severing economic ties.
The Biden administration has taken pains to assure China that decoupling is off the table. Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly stated the administration is “not looking to decouple from China” after his own meeting with dictator Xi Jinping in Beijing on June 19.
