context: From 4-9 April, Janet Yellen US Treasury Secretary visited China, where she met with Chinese leaders, local officials, academics, students and American executives in Guangzhou and Beijing. Coming days after Biden and Xi Jinping 习近平 spoke on the phone, her visit was a follow-up to her travel to China last July.
Sun Lipeng 孙立鹏 China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations Institute of American Studies outlined the three major issues with Yellen's visit to China, in particular
- the US misinterpreted the 'overcapacity problem'
- Chinese companies
- actively develop in the fields such as solar energy, NEVs (new energy vehicles)
- are very competitive globally
- provide global consumers with high-quality products at an affordable price
- contribute to the global green low-carbon transition
- American companies becoming less competitive is an inevitable result of economic inefficiency caused by over-emphasis on industrial security, forced supply chain shifts and weakened technological advantages and has nothing to do with China's production capacity
- Chinese companies
- pan-politicization and pan-securitization of economic and trade issues
- abusing sanctions, the US weaponizes economic power, which shakes up the global economic and financial order and accelerates the 'fragmentation' of the global economic system
- one-sided emphasis on the interests of US companies in China
- Yellen said that one-third of the American companies in China said that they faced unfair treatment compared with local companies
- in fact, China has always been committed to reform and market opening-up, improving business environment and boosting the confidence of foreign investors
- the fact that US companies face fierce competition on the Chinese market, to the extent that the share of the 'cake' becomes smaller, is not unfair
Overall, Sun evaluated Yellen's visit as positive but claimed that the US side's actions should be in keeping with what it says, for the visit to bear an effect.