Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, will travel to Beijing and Shanghai for a series of meetings next week, becoming the latest Biden official to visit China as the United States seeks to stabilize relations between the two countries.
The Commerce Department said in an announcement on Tuesday that Ms. Raimundo will meet with senior Chinese officials and senior US businessmen between Sunday and Tuesday. The department said Ms. Raimondo was looking forward to “constructive discussions on issues related to US-China trade relations, challenges faced by US companies and areas of potential cooperation.”
The minister will visit during a period of tensions between Washington and Beijing, and amid wild volatility in the Chinese economy, which is struggling with stalled growth, a real estate crisis and weak consumer confidence.
The Biden administration has sent a series of officials to China in recent months to try to restore some stability to bilateral relations, after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew across the United States early this year, causing relations to deteriorate badly.
Since June, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, and the presidential climate envoy, John Kerry, took trips to meet with their counterparts in China. The meetings potentially set the stage for the visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States this fall.
As the cabinet’s most senior official for advancing US corporate interests abroad, Ms. Raimondo will likely try to expand some trade ties, and voice her concerns about the recent crackdown on companies with foreign ties in China. A Chinese statistical agency has announced that it has imposed fines of nearly $1.5 million on the Mintz Group, a US investigation firm that was raided in March, after it was discovered that the company had participated in “foreign-related” surveys without official permission.
The meetings are also expected to address technological constraints overseen by Ms. Raimondo’s department, which have prevented companies in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing from sharing their most advanced technologies with China. China has strongly opposed these restrictions.
Last month, US officials said Chinese hackers, most likely linked to the country’s military or spy services, obtained Ms. Raimondo’s emails, in a breach discovered by State Department cybersecurity experts in June. US officials said the hackers broke into the email accounts of State and Commerce Department officials.
me you Contributed research from Shanghai.