US COMMERCE Secretary Gina Raimondo on Tuesday (Aug 29) said that American companies have complained to her that China has become “uninvestable”, pointing to fines, raids and other actions against firms that have made it too risky to do business in the world’s second-largest economy.

The comments, made to reporters onboard a train as her delegation of US officials headed from Beijing to Shanghai, provided a bleak picture of how US firms view China and were the bluntest Raimondo has made on her trip.

“Increasingly I hear from American business that China is uninvestable because it’s become too risky,” she noted. “So businesses look for other opportunities, they look for other countries, they look for other places to go.”

Earlier on in the day, US and Chinese officials held a fresh round of talks on contentious trade issues, the third day of the visit to Beijing by Raimondo.

On Tuesday, she met China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng in Beijing, reiterating her view that “the US-China commercial relationship is one of the most consequential” in the world. “Managing that relationship responsibly is critical to both of our nations and indeed to the whole world,” she said during a part of the meeting where journalists were allowed in the room.

She stressed that the US would “never compromise in protecting our national security”, but added that Washington “did not seek to decouple, or to hold China’s economy back”. He, in response, said that Beijing was willing to work on “new, positive efforts to keep economic consensus and step up cooperation”.

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Raimondo also met China’s Culture and Tourism Minister Hu Heping on Tuesday, underscoring “the importance of people-to-people exchange to the broader US-China bilateral relationship”, the US Commerce Department said.

She also said that the US wants to work with China to solve problems such as climate change and artificial intelligence (AI), while speaking with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at a meeting in Beijing.

“There are other areas of global concern, such as climate change, artificial intelligence, the fentanyl crisis, where we want to work with you as two global powers to do what’s right for all of humanity,” Raimondo told Li at their meeting in the Great Hall of the People.

She also met Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, with the two sides agreeing to set up a working group to iron out the laundry list of trade disputes between them. They also agreed to set up what Washington called an “export control enforcement information exchange” – described as a platform to “reduce misunderstanding of US national security policies”. The information exchange was to convene for the first time at Beijing’s commerce ministry on Tuesday, Washington said.

But Beijing painted a less-rosy picture, saying that Wang had raised “serious concerns” over Washington’s trade curbs on Chinese businesses. Those included “US Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods, its semiconductor policies, restrictions of two-way investment, discriminatory subsidies, and sanctions on Chinese enterprises”, Beijing’s commerce ministry said.

Washington defends the policies as necessary to “de-risk” its supply chains. But Wang warned that they “run counter to market rules and the principle of fair competition, and will only harm the security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains”.

The commerce secretary is one of a number of senior US officials to visit China in recent months – part of an effort by Washington to improve its working relationship with its largest strategic rival. She is scheduled to leave China on Wednesday.

Relations between the two countries have plummeted to some of their lowest levels in decades, with US trade curbs near the top of the list of disagreements.

This month, Biden issued an executive order aimed at restricting certain US investments in sensitive high-tech areas in China – a move Beijing blasted as being “anti-globalisation”. The long-anticipated rules, expected to be implemented next year, target sectors such as semiconductors and AI.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sought to reassure Chinese officials about the expected curbs during a visit to Beijing last month.

In June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Beijing, where he met President Xi Jinping and said that progress had been made on a number of key points of contention. US climate envoy John Kerry also visited China in July. REUTERS, AFP