US Commerce Secretary Raimondo to Visit China Next Week for Talks

The four-day trip comes as China struggles to fix its ailing economy

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo speaks during a conference about the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework at the Wilson Center in Washington on July 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on Aug. 22 that U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will visit China from Aug. 27 to Aug. 30.

Ms. Raimondo and U.S. business leaders will meet with senior Chinese officials in Beijing and Shanghai during the four-day trip, according to a statement from the U.S. Commerce Department.

“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 read.

The announcement came after the Commerce Department lifted export control restrictions on 27 Chinese companies. The decision was welcomed on Aug. 22 by Beijing, which stated that 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 that 1 in 5 Chinese people 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.

The closed office of the Mintz Group in an office building in Beijing on March 24, 2023. Five Chinese employees at the Beijing office of U.S. due diligence firm Mintz Group have been detained by authorities, the company said on March 24. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

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.

U.S. 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 U.S. officials were “concerned” about.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Aug. 22 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 the relationship between the United States and China, which has worsened in recent years over a range of issues, from the communist regime’s economic espionage to its assertive military actions against Taiwan. There was no major breakthrough following the trips to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy.

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.”

‘China’s Economy Is in Big Trouble’

But for some outside observers, such high-level talks have already served the interests of China, whose leadership is struggling to roll out more policies to restore domestic demand and revive the faltering economy.

“China has been playing hard to get for the last several months, and they would not talk. Now they relented and agreed to talk with high-level American cabinet members on matters that are vital to both nations’ economies,” Miles Yu, a senior fellow and director of the China Center at Hudson Institute, said in July when Ms. Yellen met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing.

“They relented ... because China’s economy is in big trouble,” Mr. Yu said. “They need the West much more than the West needs China. So they’re being a little bit more realistic this time.”

Terri Wu and Reuters contributed to this report.