Yellen to visit China, and the PBOC names new Communist Party chief
News briefing for July 3, 2023.
Here’s what else you need to know about China today:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit China this week from July 6-9, becoming the second cabinet official to travel to Beijing in a bid to build what she has previously described as a “healthy economic relationship” between the two superpowers. She is set to meet with senior Chinese officials and U.S. business leaders, but is not expected to meet with Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, nor to make “significant breakthroughs.”
Yellen’s trip comes just weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Xi and other top Chinese officials in Beijing to “stabilize” the bilateral relationship.
China named Pān Gōngshèng 潘功勝 as the top Communist Party official at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), according to a statement (in Chinese) on July 1, replacing Guō Shùqīng 郭树清 as the Party Committee Secretary at the central bank.
Pan, 59, currently acts as the PBOC deputy governor. His appointment will likely mean that he will eventually replace Yì Gāng 易纲 to become the bank’s next governor. Yi has served as the central bank’s governor since 2018.
China will impose export restrictions on two key metals, gallium and germanium, which are used in the production of semiconductors and other electronics, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced in a statement (in Chinese) today. The restrictions will come into effect on August 1.
China is the leading producer of critical raw materials in global mining. It’s also at the forefront of expanding export restrictions on such minerals between 2009 to 2020, according to an OECD report published in April, amid an intensifying global battle to control key technologies used to make hardware such as semiconductors and solar panels.
Yán Míngfù 阎明复, the Communist Party negotiator who helped mediate talks with Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, has passed away in Beijing “due to illnesses” at the age of 91.
Yan was one of the top Party representatives who reached out to liberal journalists, intellectuals, and student protesters leading up to the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He was later expelled from the CCP just a month after the June 4 massacre for inadequately following the party line for those dialogues.
A Hong Kong pro-democracy radio station aired its final show on Friday evening after its bank account was frozen, making operating conditions unsustainable. “After the Umbrella and Anti-Extradition movements, and faced with a dangerous change in the political situation, the red line is everywhere, the situation is dangerous, and it is difficult to invite guests to the show,” Citizens’ Radio said in a statement posted on Facebook (in Chinese) on June 23.
The private broadcaster, founded in 2005 by former Hong Kong legislator and pro-democracy activist Tsang Kin-shing (曾健成 Zēng Jiànchéng), was known for shows that were often critical of the authorities. Citizens’ Radio had previously been raided by the government in 2016 on suspicion of using an illegal radio transmitter to broadcast its shows.
A Chinese military delegation visited the U.K. and France from June 24 to July 1 to discuss the development of defense ties, according to a statement (in Chinese) from China’s Ministry of Defense. The delegation of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “exchanged in-depth views on international and regional security issues” and “enhanced mutual understanding and trust,” the statement said.
Chinese state media: The People’s Daily print edition today highlights a government campaign to revitalize China’s rust belt northeastern province of Liaoning.
Official news agency Xinhua’s big story today (English, Chinese) is about Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 sending a congratulatory letter to the third “Dialogue on Exchanges and Mutual Learning Among Civilizations” and the first “World Congress of Sinologists,” apparently part of his ongoing campaign to brand China as the convenor of the Global Civilization Initiative, which the nationalist tabloid Global Times calls “another chance for China to make greater contributions to the world and is a chance for the world to better understand China.”