China, US officials discuss macroeconomic developments in meeting

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) – Officials from the United States and China on Monday held a two-hour long virtual meeting to discuss domestic and global macroeconomic developments, the U.S. Treasury Department said, calling the meeting “productive and substantive”.

THE TAKE

Ties between the world’s two largest economies have been strained in recent years due to a number of issues including Taiwan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, allegations of spying, human rights issues and trade tariffs.

Senior officials from both sides have been meeting each other in recent months to lay the ground for an expected meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November.

KEY QUOTES

“Today, the United States and the People’s Republic of China held the first meeting of the Economic Working Group (EWG), which serves as an ongoing channel to discuss and facilitate progress on bilateral economic policy matters,” the Treasury Department said.

China’s finance ministry said the two sides had “in-depth, frank and constructive” talks, and also discussed bilateral cooperation in “addressing global challenges”.

Both sides will continue to maintain communication, the ministry said.

U.S. and Chinese officials also raised “areas of concern,” statements from the two sides said, without elaborating. The meeting was led by senior officials from the U.S. Treasury Department and China’s finance ministry.

The EWG was launched last month following U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to Beijing in July. It was launched in parallel with a financial working group, which will hold its first meeting on Wednesday.

CONTEXT

The economic meeting follows other high-level engagements between the two countries in recent months that have seen visits from U.S. officials to China like Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, Yellen in July and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August.

More recently, Blinken met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng in New York and U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta. China’s top diplomat will travel to the United States later this week to meet Blinken.

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Kanishka Singh is a breaking news reporter for Reuters in Washington DC, who primarily covers US politics and national affairs in his current role. His past breaking news coverage has spanned across a range of topics like the Black Lives Matter movement; the US elections; the 2021 Capitol riots and their follow up probes; the Brexit deal; US-China trade tensions; the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; the COVID-19 pandemic; and a 2019 Supreme Court verdict on a religious dispute site in his native India.