This content was first published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a five-day visit to the Chinese city of Guangzhou on Thursday as part of a growing dispute over a plan to boost China’s struggling economy, which American officials claim may impede U.S. development.
Yellen next week , accused , China of “flooding” markets for renewable energy production by seriously subsidizing things like electric vehicles, potassium- atom batteries and solar panels as Beijing , seeks to move around  , financial woes by boosting creation of export goods.
Although Taiwanese officials claim that the government’s cut-price export threaten to kill rival industries in other nations before they start, the Chinese government has refuted those claims and claimed that the country itself uses similar subsidies.
During the journey, Yellen, who was also head of the U. S. Federal Reserve from 2010 to 2014, may travel to Beijing to match Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and former Vice Premier Liu He, a , important economic advisor , to President Xi Jinping.
A Treasury official told reporters on the condition of anonymity that Yellen plans to “make evident the international economic consequences of Chinese business overcapacity undermining companies in the U.S. and firms around the world.
However, it’s not clear how welcoming Chinese leaders may get.  ,
Beijing has already , generally dismissed , the concerns raised by Yellen as dishonest, pointing to the Biden administration’s taxes- breaks tied to electronic cars, which exclude some Chinese- made vehicles.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday that China welcomed Yellen’s trip as a chance to “properly handle differences” and “build up consensus”. He rejected criticisms of China’s subsidies of emerging and green energy sectors, though.
Wang questioned “whether it is excess production capacity that the United States is truly concerned about” or whether it was simply upset that its businesses were losing out to China as a result of the “international division of labor”
” As for who is engaged in non- market practices, the fact is there for all to see”, he said. ” The U. S. side has adopted a string of measures to suppress China’s trade and technology development. This is not’ de- risking,’ but creating risks. These are typical non- market practices”.
Mushroom for improvement
It’s Yellen’s second trip to China in a year, with the U. S. Treasury secretary having traveled there , in July last year , amid the early days of the rapprochement between China and the United States.
During that visit, Yellen , told CNN , after returning, she mistakenly ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, which she called “delicious”, at a chain restaurant in Yunnan province called Yi Zuo Yi Wang, or” In and Out”.
” If the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant … they have no impact”, Yellen, who is 77, said. ” None of us experienced any ill effects after consuming them.”
Potential psychedelics are less likely to be a part of the trip this time, but after nearly a year of stronger ties between Washington and Beijing, the trip does come at a time when tensions are beginning to resurface between the world’s two biggest economies.  ,
Beijing, for instance, has raised serious concerns about a White House-backed bill currently in Congress that would force the U.S. president to outlaw TikTok in America if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell the app.
Xi even directly raised his concerns about the bill during , a rare phone call , with U. S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday, according to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council.
When asked how TikTok came up during the call between the leaders, Kirby responded,” Xi raised the issue and President Biden raised the issue.
Biden claimed to Xi that” this was not about a ban on TikTok], but it was about divestiture because it was about protecting the data security of the American people and our own national security interests.”
Diplomacy
Yellen’s trip to China comes ahead of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the president of the Philippines, and Fumio Kishida, the president’s high-profile visit to the United States, which the White House refers to as the first trilateral meeting of the three countries.
The trio this week announced , joint naval drills , in the , South China Sea , amid an ongoing dispute between the Philippines and China over the sea ‘s , Second Thomas Shoal, which belongs to the Philippines under international law but is part of a vast territorial claim by Beijing.
A delegation of U. S. lawmakers led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, also recently arrived back from a trip to meet officials in the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea.
According to Shaheen, the lawmakers had the opportunity to witness first-hand the” threats” from China to other nations with claims to the South China Sea as Chinese coast guard vessels fired water cannons and missiles at Philippine vessels as they attempted to resupply a naval station.
The” threatening maneuvers” and the militarization of the islands in the South China Sea are all factors that, according to Shaheen, contribute to the continued cooperation we have with the nations in the area.
” It has significant impacts on not just the potential for mistakes, militarily, that could be misinterpreted and set off a conflict”, she said,” but also in terms of trade and commerce, and the ability to safely navigate those waters and allow trade to move around the world”.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York, Democratic Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Michael Bennet of Colorado, as well as Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Roger Marshall of Kansas.
