US Commerce Secretary Raimondo to hold talks in China next week.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to Visit China
China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on Tuesday that U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will visit China from Aug. 27 to 30.
The U.S. Commerce Department also confirmed the trip, which said Ms. Raimondo will visit Beijing and Shanghai.
Ms. Raimondo and American business leaders will meet with senior Chinese officials during the four-day trip, according to the U.S. statement.
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“Secretary Raimondo looks forward to constructive discussions on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, challenges faced by U.S. businesses, and areas for potential cooperation,” it said.
The announcement came after the Commerce Department lifted export control restrictions on 27 Chinese companies. The decision was welcomed by Beijing on Tuesday, saying it’s conducive to normal trade relations between Chinese and U.S. companies.
The upcoming visit comes as the world’s second-largest economy is struggling with slowing growth. The latest data released in July showed exports posting their sharpest year-on-year drop since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and imports declining for five consecutive months. Factory-gate prices fell for the 10th consecutive month, while new home sales saw their most significant monthly drop since July 2022.
Chinese authorities stopped releasing the youth jobless data after they reported a new record high for six consecutive months. In June, official data showed one in five young Chinese between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed.
Yet the Chinese regime shows no signs of loosening its grip over foreign businesses, even as its sweeping regulatory crackdown shakes outside investors’ confidence.
Chinese authorities fined U.S. due diligence firm Mintz about $1.5 million, the Beijing Bureau of Statistics said in a statement dated July 5, first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Officials accused the New York-headquartered company of conducting “foreign-related statistical investigations” without seeking and obtaining approvals.
In a further notice on its website dated July 14, the bureau said Mintz conducted 37 such investigations from March 2019 to July 2022.
Chinese authorities raided Mintz’s Beijing office in March. They detained five local employees in what turned out to be the beginning of a crackdown on consultancy and due diligence firms, including Bain & Company’s office in Shanghai and Capvision Partners.
American businesses operating in China now face a more hostile environment as the expanded anti-espionage law took effect in July. The sweeping legislation broadens the definition of espionage to “all documents, data, materials, or items related to national security and interests.” But it doesn’t specify what falls under national security. China’s spy agency has called on all citizens to participate in the counterespionage campaign, a move that the United States found alarming.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said the commerce secretary will press Beijing on “some of the economic policy decisions” and “other national security decisions, from the counter-espionage law to this lack of transparency on economic data so that we can understand where they are coming from.”
Derailed US-China ties
It remains to be seen whether Ms. Raimondo’s trip could help improve U.S.-China ties, which has worsened in recent years over a range of issues, from the communist regime’s economic espionage to assertive military actions against Taiwan. There was no major breakthrough followed by the trips to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry.
Mr. Sullivan said the administration does ”not view these trips as about deliverables or particular policy outcomes. “
“We view them as a method of managing a complex relationship, a competitive relationship so that competition doesn’t tip over into conflict,” he told reporters.
“We are not sending cabinet officials to China to change China, nor do we expect these conversations to change the United States. Rather, we each have the opportunity through this high-level engagement to ensure that there is a basic stable foundation in the relationship, even as we compete intensively in a number of domains,” he said.
“I don’t think of this as we send a bunch of people, and then there’s going to be a big outcome that’s fundamentally transformative.”
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