US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday that a decoupling of the Chinese and US economies would be "virtually impossible" and would destabilise global markets, in comments made while on a visit to Beijing packed with talks with officials and businesses.

Yellen's four-day trip is her first to China as treasury chief, and she is the second high-ranking US official to visit recently after Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month.

The United States has in recent months said it is seeking to "de-risk" from China by limiting the world's second-largest economy's access to advanced technology deemed crucial to Washington's national security. It has blacklisted a number of Chinese companies to prevent them from accessing the most advanced chips while pushing its allies to follow suit.

Yellen on Friday stressed that Washington was not seeking a "wholesale separation of our economies".

"We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world's two largest economies would be destabilising for the global economy," Yellen told a meeting with representatives of US businesses at a session hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.

"And it would be virtually impossible to undertake."

During a meeting with Premier Li Qiang in the capital, Yellen said the US is seeking a healthy competition with the nation based on fair rules that benefit both countries, not a "winner-take-all" approach.

In prepared remarks, Yellen told Li that she hoped her visit would spur more regular channels of communication between the world's two largest economies, adding that both countries had a duty to "show leadership" on global challenges such as climate change.

Li told Yellen a rainbow that appeared as her plane landed from Washington on Thursday offered hope for the future of China-US ties.

"I think there is more to China-US relations than just wind and rain. We will surely see more rainbows," he said.

Earlier, Beijing has struck an optimistic tone about the visit, with the Finance Ministry saying on Friday that it would serve to "strengthen communication and exchange between the two countries".

"The nature of China-US economic and trade relations is mutually beneficial and win-win, and there is no winner in a trade war or 'decoupling and breaking chains'," a ministry official said in a statement.

On Friday morning, Yellen had a "substantive conversation" with her previous counterpart, former Vice Premier Liu He, as well as the outgoing governor of China's central bank, Yi Gang, a US Treasury official said.

"They discussed the global economic outlook as well as the respective economic outlooks for the United States and China," the official added. (Agencies)
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Last updated: 2023-07-07 HKT 18:45