Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is making a long-awaited trip to China this week
Associated PressWASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Beijing Thursday as part of an ongoing Biden administration effort to thaw U.S.-China relations, a senior Treasury official said Sunday. The Chinese protested loudly, but Biden later said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.” The U.S. president’s statements have come after tensions over a Chinese surveillance balloon that the U.S. government shot down, U.S.-led restrictions on China’s access to advanced computer chips and ongoing tensions about the status and security of Taiwan. Yellen met with her previous Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Liu He, in January in Switzerland and made a big speech at Johns Hopkins University in April calling for “ cooperation on the urgent global challenges of our day ” between the two countries for the sake of maintaining global stability, while supporting economic restrictions on China to advance U.S national security interests. Yellen’s trip also comes as Biden considers issuing an executive order that would tighten rules on some overseas investments by U.S. companies in an effort to limit China’s ability to acquire technologies that could improve its military prowess.