Will the US and China succeed in halting the downward spiral in bilateral ties?

TWO weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Beijing for intensive talks to stop the dangerous downward spiral of the US-China relationship, the first fruits of the accord to re-establish channels of communication came with the announcement that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen would make a four-day visit to China starting Jul 6.

In a possibly coordinated move, China’s communist party last Saturday (Jul 1) 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,” Yellen said in an interview last week, before the formal announcement of her trip. “There are a new group of leaders, we need to get to know one another.”