BEIJING: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that a decoupling of the US and Chinese economies would be “virtually impossible” and would destabilize global markets, in comments made while on a visit to Beijing packed with talks with officials and businesses.
Yellen’s four-day trip is her first to China as Treasury chief, and she is the second high-ranking US official to visit recently after Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month.
The United States has in recent months said it is seeking to “de-risk” from China by limiting the world’s second-largest economy’s access to advanced technology deemed crucial to Washington’s national security.
The US has blacklisted a number of Chinese companies to prevent them from accessing the most advanced chips while pushing its allies to follow suit.
Yellen on Friday stressed that Washington was not seeking a “wholesale separation of our economies”.
“We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilising for the global economy,” Yellen told a meeting with representatives of US businesses at a session hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.
“And it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”
Ahead of Yellen’s trip, Beijing unveiled new export controls on metals key to semiconductor manufacturing on national security grounds, in the latest salvo in the chips war.
The Treasury secretary Friday told American businesspeople Washington was “concerned” about the curbs.
“We are still evaluating the impact of these actions, but they remind us of the importance of building resilient and diversified supply chains,” she said.
Beijing has struck an optimistic tone about the visit, with China’s finance ministry saying on Friday that it would serve to “strengthen communication and exchange between the two countries”.
