Yellen's visit comes with pragmatic expectations

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's visit to China from Thursday to Sunday comes at a critical time for bilateral ties, and therefore technically it is a test of whether she can take the decade-long good working relations she has built with her "old friends" in China forward and allay, if not altogether eliminate, the increasing distrust between the world's two largest economies.

Yellen faces a tough challenge, for she has to convince Beijing that the slew of "de-risking" measures Washington, and some of its allies, have been taking are not intended to contain China or decouple the two economies. Her job is all the more difficult because it is the United States that has been making all the wrong moves targeting China.

Yellen's is perhaps the only voice of reason amid the belligerent anti-China din in Washington. She has termed the tariffs that the US has imposed on China as "taxes on consumers" and warned "decoupling" could be "disastrous".

No wonder an official in her delegation told the media: "We don't expect specific policy breakthroughs in these meetings, but we do hope to have and expect to have frank and productive conversations that will help lay the groundwork for future communication, including at the sub-Cabinet level."

Yellen had a "frank and productive discussion" on mutual concerns with Xie Feng, China's ambassador to the US, shortly before leaving for Beijing, so she could come prepared to get straight to the point during her meetings with her Chinese hosts.

Not surprisingly, both sides deem Yellen's visit as a high-stake one and both hope her meetings with her Chinese hosts will yield ways to address the problems of mutual concern and thus ease the tensions between the two sides.

Yellen can take advantage of her pragmatic style as an economist to help ease, or better still end, the tariff war and thus ensure the healthy growth of bilateral trade which, despite the US' tariff war since 2018, has been growing.

Hopefully, Yellen, the economist and pragmatist, will at least be able to help prevent the tariff war from intensifying and overall bilateral relations from further deteriorating.

It is encouraging that during their meeting on Friday, Yellen told Premier Li Qiang that the US does not seek "decoupling", and is willing to work with China to strengthen cooperation in stabilizing the macro-economy, and addressing global challenges, so as to seek mutual benefits and win-win results.

China and the US need to and have the capability to increase economic exchanges and cooperation. Hopefully, Yellen's visit will help stabilize market expectations and create conditions for the enterprises of the two countries to conduct normal economic, trade and investment activities.