If the US wants economic engagement with China, it has to prove it

"The US and China are talking again, but what happens next?" asks a headline in the Guardian.

The story came after US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen ended a recent four-day trip to Beijing, where she met with China's leaders, claiming that the two countries have taken a "step forward" in stabilising relations and "building a resilient and productive channel of communication with China's new economic team."

Once again, Yellen denied the claim that the US seeks to decouple its economy from Beijing, claiming that the US seeks a "dynamic and healthy global economy that is open, free and fair, not one that is fragmented or forces countries to take sides."

Recently, US officials have been making more peaceful overtures to China. Yellen's trip follows that of Anthony Blinken from a month or so previously. The message is more or less the same, they claim to reject the notion of a "cold war," total decoupling and seek to "avoid conflict" with China, pushing talk of so-called "lines of communication" and "guardrails" in their dealings.

This comes amidst months of fraught relations following the mass hysteria exhibited during the "balloon incident" at the start of the year. Despite this, actions speak louder than words. Yellen's comments included talk of further restrictions on certain industries and technologies in China, and then despite the growing blacklistings, used the buzz phrase of "China's unfair economic practices."

Is the US seriously committed to a stable and prosperous economic relationship with China? It doesn't look like it when you look at the facts. First of all, the US continues to maintain over US$300 million in terms of punitive, Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports, even at the expense of its own economy and inflation. The tariffs have long become a political "sacred cow" which the administration, embracing the Trump-era consensus of protectionism, dare not touch due to the backlash they'd receive from Republicans.

When a 2022 debate was held regarding easing the tariffs, the Nancy Pelosi visit to Taiwan made quick worth it. It is hoped that maintaining such tariffs will "diversify supply chains" and therefore encourage a shift of manufacturing away from China.

Which leads to the next point, in practice the US seeks to alienate China from critical supply chains in several areas. When it talks about so-called "supply chain resilience," what it really means is anti-China. To this end, the US has produced highly opportunistic moves in order to try and undermine China's exports of several critical goods.

In particular, by associating them with unsubstantiated allegations of forced labor related to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This has been done to target crop exports such as sugar, cotton and tomatoes, but most notably to attack solar panel exports with the US seeking to consolidate its influence over the global clean energy supply chain, a Biden-era initiative. In conjunction with this, the US has tried to create economic alliances targeting China, the primary one being the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

This is not withstanding the fact that the US has blacklisted hundreds upon hundreds of Chinese companies using the state department "entity list," and has coerced third-party countries into following these restrictions, particularly in the field of semiconductors. Likewise the US has often interfered in Chinese investments in third-party countries, often getting states to cancel or veto investments. Then, despite doing this and all of the above, it has accused China of implementing so-called "economic coercion" and criticised even small months to limit the access of US firms in the Chinese market.

This appears to reflect an extraordinary attitude that the US has the right to dominate the Chinese market as it pleases, but China should be locked out of western markets in a number of areas.

This of course reminds us that the only economic relationship the US sees tolerable with China as a deemed competitor, is the one where Beijing is the subordinate, that is fulfilling the preferences and needs of the United States. That is buying US farm products in bulk, but not selling much the other way.

It is an "opium war" mentality, as the US of course similarly pursues its relentless militarization of China's periphery at all costs. This is not fair or metric, the US wants to impose massive restrictions while demanding China make large scale concessions. There is no distinction between geopolitics and economics in this light. So does Yellen's meeting mean much? Not a great deal.

The cycle of US domestic politics can be unpredictable, and all it takes it one "meme" to gain intensity and full blown hostility is back. China would very much hope, within its own interests, to stabilise the relationship with the US where it can, which is why it makes a sincere effort to host these kinds of meetings. However, they are under no illusions regarding what the US intentions really are at this point.

(The author, a postgraduate student of Chinese studies at Oxford University, is an English analyst on international relations. The views are his own.)