US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and China’s deputy finance minister Liao Min met in Washington on Friday to discuss macroeconomic policy developments, including Beijing’s most ambitious stimulus measures since the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier this week, Yellen criticised Beijing’s recent economic measures for lacking initiatives to boost consumer spending, saying she had not “really heard policy announcements on the Chinese side to address that in the way that I was hoping”.
The Joe Biden administration has repeatedly accused Beijing of signing fat checks to state-owned Chinese firms and flooding global markets with cheap goods that are not entirely domestically consumed.
Beijing’s extensive steps last month to revitalise its struggling economy are meant to tackle the country’s persistent property crisis and sluggish domestic spending. The measures included interest-rate cuts and the easing of certain home-purchasing restrictions.