US commerce secretary to visit China next week as Washington seeks to ease tensions with Beijing

Following a slew of high-level US official trips in the last couple of months in a bid to ease tensions with Beijing, US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo will visit China from 27 to 30 August. “Secretary Raimondo looks forward to constructive discussions on issues relating to the US-China commercial relationship, challenges faced by US businesses, and areas for potential cooperation,” the US Department of Commerce said in a statement. She will travel to both Beijing and Shanghai, Washington said, while Beijing also confirmed the visit, adding that Raimondo has been invited by her Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao. Her visit will build on an agreement between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in Bali last year “to deepen communication between the US and the PRC on a range of issues,” Washington said. Raimondo’s visit follows a slew of high-level US official trips to China as Washington seeks to ease tensions with Beijing. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited last month, stressing the need for healthy economic competition and improved communication, and urged cooperation on the grave threat posed by climate change. And in June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Beijing, where he met Xi and said progress had been made on a number of key sources of contention. But neither visit led to major breakthroughs between the two powers, which are at loggerheads over everything from trade to human rights and Taiwan. With inputs from AFP