Bizarre moment Treasury Secretary BOWS to China’s vice premier

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was slammed for bowing multiple times when she met with China’s vice premier He Lifeng, as some critics say the protocol error is a sign of American weakness.

Yellen, who served as chair of the Federal Reserve before becoming Joe Biden‘s top financial official, wrapped up her first visit to China as treasury secretary on Sunday.

Moments after bowing at least three times, Yellen then stumbled over He’s name, calling him ‘Vice Premier Hu.’

Both Washington and Beijing said the meetings during her four-day trip were fruitful, although the visit – designed to help smooth a rocky relationship – did not generate any concrete agreements.

Her visit came as the U.S. on June 30 warned its citizens against traveling to China, citing the risk of arbitrary detention. 

On Saturday, Yellen met Vice Premier He Lifeng, and bowed effusively on meeting the top Chinese official.

Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency said the meeting yielded an agreement to ‘strengthen communication and cooperation on addressing global challenges’. 

Yellen said Sunday told a press conference that her talks with top Chinese officials have helped put ties on ‘surer footing’. 

Former White House staffer Bradley Blakeman, who served during President George W. Bush’s administration, told the New York Post that Yellen’s kowtowing to the Chinese official was inappropriate.

‘Never, ever, ever – an American official does not bow,’ said Blakeman. ‘It looks like she’s been summoned to the principal’s office, and that’s exactly the optics the Chinese love.’

Blakeman added: ‘The way to treat an adversary is, you don’t go hat in hand. ‘But with this administration, time and time again, we embarrass ourselves and show weakness.

‘And it just shows the lack of effective leverage we have.’ Author Max Murray said: ‘She did not realize bowing as an American official was a breach of protocol.

‘They don’t reciprocate. He even backs away to give her more space to kowtow.’

Her trip came on the heels of Antony Blinken’s visit, as part of a Biden administration push to improve communication between the two superpowers.

Yellen stressed the need for healthy economic competition and improved communication, and urged cooperation on the ‘existential threat’ posed by climate change.

‘We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive,’ she told journalists at the US embassy in Beijing on Sunday.

‘Both nations have an obligation to responsibly manage this relationship: to find a way to live together and share in global prosperity,’ she added.

Yellen said on Sunday that while there are ‘significant disagreements’ between the countries, her talks had been ‘direct, substantive, and productive’.

‘My bilateral meetings – which totaled about 10 hours over two days – served as a step forward in our effort to put the US-China relationship on surer footing,’ she said.

‘I feel confident that we will have more frequent and regular communication.’

Topping the laundry list of disagreements are Washington’s trade curbs, which it says are crucial to safeguard national security.

On Sunday, Yellen said she had stressed that Washington’s measures ‘are not used by us to gain economic advantage’.

‘These actions are motivated by straightforward national security considerations,’ she said.

And with the US mulling fresh curbs that could more strictly regulate American outbound investment to China, Yellen said any new moves would be implemented in ‘a transparent way’.

‘I emphasized that it would be highly targeted and clearly directed narrowly at a few sectors where we have specific national security concerns,’ she said.

‘I want to allay their fears that we would do something that would have broad-based impacts on the Chinese economy.

‘That’s not the case, that’s not the intention.’

She also said she had raised ‘serious concerns’ over ‘unfair economic practices’ by Beijing.

She cited barriers to foreign firms entering the Chinese market as well as issues around the protection of intellectual property.

‘I also expressed my worries about a recent uptick in coercive actions against American firms,’ she said, referring to a recent national security crackdown against US firms in China.

During a roundtable of experts on Saturday, Yellen also stressed the ‘critical’ need for the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases to collaborate on climate financing.

‘The United States and China must work together to address this existential threat,’ she said.

Looking ahead, ‘any concrete key breakthroughs and major deliverables presumably will be reserved for the two top leaders to announce,’ said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

‘The two sides have not had this level of communications and consultations for a number of years,’ she told AFP.

Last month, Biden voiced confidence in meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping soon.

Blinken last month became the first top U.S. diplomat to visit China in five years following tensions between the two superpowers over COVID, Taiwan, economic rivalry, human rights and the ‘spy balloon’ saga.

Both Washington and Beijing said progress was made – without detailing concrete examples.

Blinken’s trip was then swiftly overshadowed by President Joe Biden referring to Xi as a dictator – remarks that infuriated China. 

Biden downplayed the drama, insisting he expected to see Xi himself in the near future, and he didn’t think his words would make any difference to their relationship.

Yellen and Blinken are expected to be followed to China later this year by John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. 

Blinken said last week the visits were aimed only at ‘building back sustained lines of communication’ with Chinese officials.

‘The significance is they’re talking,’ said David Loevinger, who helped coordinate U.S.-China economic talks for the Obama administration.

He told The Washington Post: ‘It is striking — at all levels of both the U.S. and Chinese governments — how little communication is going on. 

‘We need to be able to talk and have relationships where people can pick up the phone.’

Her visit came amid simmering Chinese anger at Biden’s ‘dictator’ remark.

Biden, in off-the-cuff remarks at a fundraiser, said that Xi was embarrassed over the recent tensions surrounding a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had been shot down by the Air Force over the East Coast. 

‘The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it was he didn’t know it was there,’ said Biden, referencing the February incident.

‘That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course.’

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that Biden’s comments ‘go totally against facts and seriously violate diplomatic protocol, and severely infringe on China’s political dignity.’

‘It is a blatant political provocation. China expresses strong dissatisfaction and opposition,’ Mao said at a daily briefing. 

‘The U.S. remarks are extremely absurd and irresponsible.’

Mao reiterated China’s contention that the balloon was intended for meteorological research and had been blown off-course accidentally.

‘The U.S. should have handled it in a calm and professional manner,’ she said. 

‘However, the U.S. distorted facts and used forces to hype up the incident, fully revealing its nature of bullying and hegemony.’

On Saturday, the China´s People´s Liberation Army sent 13 aircraft and 6 vessels into airspace and waters around Taiwan, overlapping with Yellen´s visit to Beijing aimed at mending strained relations.

U.S. support for the self-governing island republic that split from mainland China amid civil war in 1949 remains a major irritant in relations with Beijing. 

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it is monitoring the situation from the air and sea, and land-based missile systems were prepared to respond. It said four Chinese aircraft – two SU-30 fighters, one BZK-005 reconnaissance plane and one Y-8 anti-submarine warfare plane – crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait that serves as a de-facto border between the sides, and had entered Taiwan’s southwestern air defense identification zone.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary and sends air and naval missions on virtually a daily basis in an attempt to wear down the island´s defense capabilities and intimidate its 23 million people, who thus far seem largely unfazed by such moves.

On Friday, the U.S. recommended Americans reconsider traveling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement and exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions. 

No specific cases were cited, but the advisory came after a 78-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges in May.

It also followed the passage last week of a sweeping Foreign Relations Law that threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China’s interests.

China also recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, with offices being raided, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.

‘The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including issuing exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law,’ the U.S. advisory said.

‘U.S. citizens traveling or residing in the PRC may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,’ it warned.

The advisory also said that Chinese authorities ‘appear to have broad discretion to deem a wide range of documents, data, statistics, or materials as state secrets and to detain and prosecute foreign nationals for alleged espionage.’

It listed a wide range of potential offenses from taking part in demonstrations to sending electronic messages critical of Chinese policies or even simply conducting research into areas deemed sensitive.

Exit bans could be used to compel individuals to participate in Chinese government investigations, pressure family members to return from abroad, resolve civil disputes in favor of Chinese citizens and ‘gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments,’ the advisory said.

Similar advisories were issued for the semi-autonomous Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao. They were dated Friday and emailed to journalists on Monday.

The U.S. had issued similar advisories to its citizens in the past, but those in recent years had mainly warned of the dangers of being caught in strict and lengthy lockdowns while China closed its borders for three years under its draconian ‘zero-COVID’ policy.

China generally responds angrily to what it considers U.S. efforts to impugn its authoritarian Communist Party-led system. It has issued its own travel advisories concerning the U.S., warning of the dangers of crime, anti-Asian discrimination and the high cost of emergency medical assistance.

China had no immediate response to the travel advisory on Monday.

Details of the accusations against the accused spy John Shing-Wan Leung are not available, given China’s authoritarian political system and the ruling Communist Party’s absolute control over legal matters. 

Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, was detained in the southeastern city of Suzhou on April 15, 2021 – a time when China had closed its borders and tightly restricted movement of people domestically to control the spread of COVID-19.

Along with several detained Americans, two Chinese-Australians – Cheng Lei, who formerly worked for China’s state broadcaster, and writer Yang Jun – have been held since 2020 and 2019 respectively without word on their sentencing.

Perhaps the most notorious case of arbitrary detention involved two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained in China in 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the tech powerhouse’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

They were charged with national security crimes that were never explained and released three years later after the U.S. settled fraud charges against Meng. 

Many countries labeled China’s action ‘hostage politics.’