When Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, visited China this week, she joined a long line of US politicians who have come to the country to try to persuade Chinese officials to open their market to foreign businesses and buy more American exports, in addition to other goals.
Ms. Raimondo left Shanghai on Wednesday night without a concrete commitment from China to treat foreign businesses more equally or to boost purchases of Boeing jets, Iowa corn or other products. At a farewell news conference, he said that hopes for such an outcome were unrealistic.
Instead, Ms. Raimondo said his biggest achievement was the restoration of lines of communication with China that would reduce the chance of miscalculation between the world’s two largest economies. He and Chinese officials agreed on the trip to create new dialogues between the countries, including a working group for commercial issues that American businesses have urged to set up.
“The greatest thing that has been done on both sides is a commitment to talk more,” Ms. Raimondo on Wednesday.
He also delivered what he described as a tough message. The Biden administration is ready to work to promote trade with China for many categories of goods. But the administration won’t heed China’s biggest demand: that the United States ease strict export controls on the most advanced semiconductors and the equipment to make them.
“We do not discuss matters of national security,” Ms. Raimondo to reporters during his visit.
While he called the trip “a great start,” the big question is where it will lead. There is a long history of frustrating and unproductive economic talks between the United States and China, and there is little reason to believe that this time will prove otherwise.
Forums for discussion may have helped resolve some individual business grievances, but they have not reversed a broad and years-long slide toward more conflict in bilateral relations. Today, the US-China relationship faces a variety of significant security and economic issues, including China’s more aggressive posture abroad, its use of US technology to advance its military and the its recent foray into foreign-owned businesses.
said Ms. Raimondo that he supports the president and US officials. And Biden administration officials have argued that even the move to start speaking made sense, after a certain period. Relations between the United States and China cooled in August when Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time, visited Taiwan, and they froze completely after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the United States in February.
The journey of Ms. Raimondo concluded a summer of outreach by four senior Biden officials. R. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, who took office in January 2022 and accompanied Ms. Raimondo on the trip, said Tuesday that American officials have “literally not talked to the Chinese leadership at a senior level, my first 15 months here.”
“In a very, very challenging relationship, intensive diplomacy is critical,” he added.
Not everyone views reengagement as a good thing. Republican lawmakers, in particular, increasingly see the conflict between the United States and China as a fundamental conflict of national interests. Critics view the outreach as an invitation for China to drag out reforms, or a signal to Beijing that the United States is willing to make concessions.
“In more than two dozen great power conflicts over the past 200 years, none have ended with the sides talking out of trouble,” Michael Beckley, an associate professor of political science at Tufts University, said. written in Foreign Affairs this month. He added, “The bottom line is that great power rivalries cannot be sealed with memoranda of understanding.”
The space for compromise also seems narrow. Both governments have little desire to be seen by domestic audiences as making concessions. And in both countries, the share of trade that is considered unrestricted or a matter of national security is growing.
Ms. Raimondo expressed concern about being drawn into unproductive talks with China — an ongoing issue over the past several decades. But he also describes himself as a pragmatist, who will push to do his best and not waste time on others.
“I don’t want to go back to the days of dialogue for the sake of dialogue,” he said. “That said, nothing good comes from shutting down communication. What comes from a lack of communication is misjudgment, miscalculation and increased risk.”
“We have to do it differently,” said Ms. Raimondo about his new dialogue, adding that the US-China relationship is very fruitful. “We have to commit ourselves to take some action. And we can’t allow ourselves to move into a cynical place.
Kurt Tong, a former US consul general in Hong Kong who is now a managing partner at Asia Group, a Washington consulting firm, said Ms. Raimondo offered China half of what it wanted. He sent a clear message that many American companies should be free to do business in China, after years of receiving criticism for doing so during the Trump administration and still from many Republicans in Congress. But he did not agree to relax American export controls.
“China was essentially forced by circumstances to accept that half a loaf,” Mr. Tong said, adding, “I felt there was a real desire in Beijing to strengthen the relationship, both because of the geopolitical relationship but also, perhaps more important. , the poverty on the economic side.”
China’s recent economic weakness may create some openings for compromise. China’s economy has just recovered from its pandemic lockdown. China’s youth unemployment rate has risen, its debt is rising, and foreign investment in the country has fallen, as multinational companies look for other places to build their factories.
In a meeting with Ms. Raimondo on Wednesday, Shanghai party secretary Chen Jining admitted that the sluggish economy has made business ties more important.
“Business and trade relations serve as a stabilizing ballast for bilateral relations,” Mr. Chen said. “However, today’s world is quite complicated. The economic rebound was a bit lackluster. So strong bilateral ties in terms of trade and business are in the interest of both countries and also demanded by the world community.”
Ms. responded. Raimondo said he hopes to discuss “concrete” ways in which they can work together to achieve business goals and “to bring about a more predictable business environment, a predictable regulatory environment and a level playing field for American business here. in Shanghai.”
Some of the issues raised by Ms. Raimondo in his visit — including the theft of intellectual property, patent protection and the inability of Visa and Mastercard to receive final approval for access to the Chinese market — are the same findings – discussed in economic dialogues with China more than a decade ago, including under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
For example, China promised in 2001 as part of its entry into the World Trade Organization that it would quickly allow American credit card companies into its market, and it lost a WTO case on the issue in 2012. But 22 years later, the Visa and Mastercard still do not have equal access to the Chinese market.
For more than three decades, the commerce secretary’s visits to China have followed a familiar script. The visiting American official will call on China to open its markets to more American investment, and allow more equal competition among foreign and domestic companies. The commerce secretary will then attend the signing of contracts for exports to China.
This includes Barbara H. Franklin, who in 1992, at the end of the George HW Bush administration, oversaw the signing of $1 billion in contracts and the re-establishment of commercial relations with China after the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 .
Gary Locke of the Obama administration oversaw the signing of a broad contract in 2009 for the provision of American construction services. And Wilbur Ross, who went to China on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in 2017, returned with $250 billion in deals for everything from smartphone parts to helicopters to Boeing jets.
These deals have done little to erase China’s massive trade imbalance with the United States. China fairly consistently sells $3 to $4 a year worth of goods to the United States for every dollar of goods it buys.
As a sign of how much the focus of the relationship has changed, Ms. Raimondo contains more discussion of national security than new contracts. He gave his final news conference in a hangar at Shanghai Pudong Airport near two Boeing 737-800s, but did not mention the contract for several Boeings that China has yet to take delivery of, let alone any new sales.
China, the world’s largest single market for new jetliners in recent years, essentially stopped buying Boeing jets during the Biden administration and switched to Airbus planes from Europe to show its dismay at the American policy. said Ms. Raimondo on Tuesday raised the loss of Boeing purchases with Chinese leaders during his two days in Beijing.
“I grew all those companies,” Ms. Raimondo. “I don’t receive any commitments. I am very firm in our expectations. I think I was heard. And as I said, we have to see if they take any action.”
