Nearly two weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing for intensive talks to stop the dangerous downward spiral of the U.S.-China relationship, the first fruits of the accord appeared with the announcement that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen would make a four-day visit to China starting Thursday.
In a possibly coordinated move, the Chinese Communist Party last Saturday announced the appointment of Pan Gongsheng, who has been deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China for over a decade, as the bank’s party secretary, a move The Wall Street Journal called a prelude to his becoming governor.
“My hope in traveling to China is to re-establish contact,” Ms. Yellen said in an interview program last week, before the formal announcement of her trip. “There are a new group of leaders, we need to get to know one another.”