Transcript of part of Janet Yellen’s speech in China, with comments.

Up to now, Yellen’s China visit takes a low profile in Chinese media.  She is not treated as an important guest, but she is nevertheless treated kindly.  In fact, she is spending more time with American business in China, than with the Chinese. There was a rainbow in the sky as she arrived and it was called a good omen.   She is in fact being treated (dare I say it?) womanly, talking about rainbows after wind and rain.  If you ask me for my opinion, she is being kindly talked down to.  Will Xi Jinping see her for a meeting?  We don’t know, but time is getting short.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang met with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Beijing on Friday, urging the US to maintain a “rational and pragmatic” attitude and work with China to bring bilateral ties back to the right track as soon as possible, while also noting that China-US ties can see “rainbows” after a round of “wind and rain.”

Transcript of J Yellen’s speech as in the video below, with my comments indicated:

Yellen: I’m communicating the concerns that are heard from the US business community, inclucing China’s non-market tools like expanded subsidies for its state owned enterprises and domestic firms, as well as barriers to market access for foreign firms.

Comment:  You are in China now, Janet.  They will do what they will do.  Starting out with accusations such as this, will get you nowhere.

Yellen: I’ve been particularly troubled by punitive actions that have been taken against US firms in recent months.

Comment:  You are in China now Janet,  If there are US firms operating they have to operate by Chinese Law, Rules and Regulations.  There is no special dispensation.

Yellen:  I’m also concerned about new export controls recently announced by China on two critical minerals used in technologies like semi-conductors.

We are still evaluating the impact of these actions but they remind us of the importance of building resilient and diversified supply chains.

Comment:  Your concern should have started with the US sanctioning and disallowing any flow of technology (semi-conductors and fab machinery) to China, specifically from the Netherlands.  You may have a short memory, but others remember the CHIPS and Science Act last year, specifically promulgated to prohibit funding recipients from expanding semiconductor manufacturing in China and countries defined by US law as posing a national security threat to the United States. 

Currently, you want to extend that legislation to the Huawei cloud business, also posing as a national security threat.

And we have only just started but could add a long list of US sanctions and legislation to prohibit China from developing.  That is not national security per se, it is being a sore loser.   

The Chinese have long memories.  They do remember that there still is a state of trade war against China in existence.

Yellen: Our economic relationship with China must work for American businesses and workers.  I will always champion your interests and work to make sure there is a level playing field.  This includes coordinating with our allies to respond to China’s unfair economic practices.

Comment:  It must?  China must create a level playing field for the US?  No!  China’s economic relationship must be effective and work first for China.

Yellen: I also think that a shift toward market reforms would be in China’s interests.  A market based approach helped spurred rapid growth in China and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.  It is a remarkable economic success story.

Many of your firms understand how a level playing field can benefit both of our economies.   China has an enormous and growing middle class with consumers who are eager to consume American goods and services.

Comment: And now she hammers it in.  Work for us China, and we will make sure you consume American goods and services.  One does not know what to say because this is so styled in empire styling, that it is very difficult not to see it.   It is a message not of economic cooperative structuring, it is a message of US threat.  Let’s talk about rainbows Janet.  The threat does not work any longer.

Yellen: I’ve made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies.  We seek to diversify and not to decouple.  Decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the Global Economy and it will be virtually impossible to undertake.

Comment:  We seek to diversify which is another way to say .. if you do not work according to our dictat, we will sell and buy somewhere else.  That, I think, is just fine.

Cherry on the Cake Yellen:  I also made clear that actions we take to protect our national security are designed to be narrowly targeted and that they are premised on straight forward national security consideration.  They are not undertaken to gain economic advantage over China.

Comment:  So, the US may call whatever it wants as a national security consideration even though China has said throughout that the narrow definition of national security is exactly to gain economic advantage.  China should not worry.  Let the US do the definitions, and it will be beneficial for China to simply follow.  The US may do whatever it wants to remove for example Huawei from the economic landscape, and it would be for national security considerations?  Don’t do anything China!

And now we know why the Chinese are talking about rainbows.  The Chinese Foreign Ministry stated it in short:  “We always believe that China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature and hope that the US can create a favorable environment for the sound development of China-US economic and trade ties and win-win cooperation with concrete actions. 

Note the words:  Concrete Actions and the US is responsible to create their own favorable environment, and this is what the US is hearing over and over again.  We do not accept your words, show us your actions.  What Yellen did during this visit, spending much time with US businesses in China, is in my opinion to attempt to mobilize the American business community against the Chinese State and Yellen’s statements are mainly provocative and coercive.  There is no other way to see it.  It is the age old creation of discontent of the beginnings of a color revolution, only this time for business.  There are other objectives here.  The US would like to see American business re-shore, or off-shore to their new ‘allies’ in the region, preferably to what is called the Asia-Pacific Four:  Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.

One can spend a long time analyzing this speech in detail.  China has already done it, back in May of this year when they released a white paper titled:

America’s Coercive Diplomacy and Its Harm – http://nz.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zyxw/202305/t20230520_11080615.htm

The quoted part following relates to China, and the full document relates to the wider landscape with a final paragraph stating:  “The United States’ coercive diplomacy endangers the whole world”

◆ Violating the principle of fair trade and imposing tariffs on China. In July 2018, the US launched a trade war with China, announcing a 25% tariff on approximately $34 billion of goods imported from China; in August, an additional 25% tariff on $16 billion worth of Chinese goods was announced; and in September, the US announced yet again a 10% tariff on $200 billion of Chinese imports. In May 2019, it was announced that tariffs on the $200 billion of Chinese goods would be raised from 10% to 25%; in August, it was announced that additional tariffs on about $550 billion of Chinese goods exported to the US would be raised, escalating the China-US trade war.

 

Tech blockade against China in the semiconductor sector. In August 2022, the “CHIPS and Science Act” was enacted. The law, which plans to provide up to $52.7 billion in government subsidies for the US semiconductor industry, requires semiconductor companies that receive federal financial aid not to make substantive expansion in countries such as China. The US government has joined Japan, South Korea and Chinese Taiwan to form the so-called “Chip 4” in an attempt to limit the development of China’s semiconductor industry.

 

Using state power to suppress China’s high-tech enterprises. The previous administration of the United States launched the “Clean Network” program, which took national security and privacy of its citizens as an excuse, explicitly requiring the elimination of Chinese enterprises such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba in five aspects, namely, telecommunications networks, mobile application stores, mobile application programs, cloud services and undersea cables. The then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other US politicians lobbied and coerced other countries and regions to join the so-called “Clean Network” alliance. Senior US officials even intimidated countries such as Cyprus, demanding that they not cooperate with Chinese 5G suppliers, or the consequences would be serious. The US has put more than 1,000 Chinese companies, including ZTE, Huawei and DJI, on various sanctions lists, using national security as an excuse to clamp down on Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat.

 

Under the guise of democracy and human rights, the US has hyped up questions concerning Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang. The “TAIPEI Act,” the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,” the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” and other bills related to China have been produced, and they are firmly linked to issues of trade and technological exchanges with China. It unjustifiably interferes in China’s internal affairs and coerces Western countries into keeping with the US.

 

US hyped up the so-called “lab leak theory” of the coronavirus and spared no efforts to smear and stigmatize China. In disregard of the “Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019,” the US used its intelligence services to issue the so-called assessment on COVID-19 origins. The US insists on politicizing and taking advantage of the issue of tracing the origin of the virus, casting a shadow over global cooperation to combat the pandemic.

Right on.  Let’s talk about rainbows.

BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) — Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Friday met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Beijing.

Li said the world needs a generally stable China-U.S. relationship, and whether the two countries can find the right way to get along is of significance to the future of humanity. Last year, the two heads of state met in Bali and reached a series of important understandings, charting the course for China-U.S. relations. Mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation are the basic principles of state-to-state interactions, and also the right way for countries to get along with each other.

 

“Chinese culture values peace above everything else, as opposed to hegemony and bullying,” Li said. It is hoped that the U.S. side will adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude, and work with China in the same direction to push bilateral relations back onto the right track at an early date.

 

Noting that the economic interests of China and the United States are closely intertwined, Li said that mutual benefits are the essence of China-U.S. economic relations, and strengthening cooperation is the realistic demand of and right choice for both sides.

 

“China’s development is an opportunity rather than a challenge for the United States, and a gain rather than a risk,” Li said. He added that politicizing economic cooperation or overstretching the concept of security on such cooperation does no good for the economic development of the two countries and the whole world

To conclude, China has given its answer to Yellen already.  I have difficulty thinking that she will be able to see or have a meeting with anyone but Chinese Premier Li Qiang.  You can find her somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.