U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo arrived in Beijing on Aug. 27, kicking off three days of talks with senior Chinese officials who are grappling with a faltering economy.
According to China’s state media, Ms. Raimondo was greeted by Li Feng, director general of China’s Commerce Ministry, and U.S. Ambassador Nick Burns at the Beijing Capital International Airport.
Ms. Raimondo is the fourth Biden cabinet official to visit Beijing in the past three months after Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and climate envoy John Kerry.
Outside observers expect the communist regime to be more friendly with Ms. Raimondo than its previous U.S. guests, especially Mr. Blinken, who received a muted welcome in Beijing and had his biggest request—to resume the military hotline—rejected.
China is reaching out with warm messages for Ms. Raimondo as the regime wrestles with its faltering economy, Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at Taiwan’s government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times, on Aug. 26 while the commerce chief was en route to Beijing.
“The stock market will continue to slump, the ticking time bomb in the property sector could explode at any time, [youth] unemployment is at a record high, and the foreign investors are leaving China,” he said. “The internal economic situation is very unfavorable.”
But the ailing economy was “created by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] itself,” Mr. Su noted.
Under CCP leader Xi Jinping, China updated its anti-espionage law, which broadens the definition of espionage to “all documents, data, materials, or items related to national security and interests.” The vaguely worded legislation, which doesn’t specify what falls under national security, brings more challenges to global businesses after several raids and arrests rattled investors.
The authorities have slapped Mintz, a U.S. due-diligence firm, with a $1.5 million fine in a security crackdown after police raided its Beijing office and detained five of its local employees in March.
By Dorothy Li
