Senior Finance Officials Hold First US-China Working Group Session

Senior officials from the US Treasury Department and People’s Bank of China have held their first meeting of the 'Financial Working Group', a mechanism to "deepen communication" and dial back tensions, established during Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's trip to China in July.

• According to the Treasury Department, the working group "serves as an ongoing channel for both countries to discuss financial policy matters and cooperation on common challenges."
• In a readout of the meeting Treasury says: "The two-hour virtual meeting included a substantive and wide-ranging discussion on domestic and global financial stability, financial supervision and regulation, sustainable finance, and anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT)," adding that, "U.S. officials also frankly raised areas of disagreement."
• The meeting comes ahead of a high-profile visit from China's top diplomat Wang Yi who is scheduled to arrive in Washington tomorrow on a three-day trip.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a session of the UNSC yesterday that he would work with Wang on foreign policy issues, including the war between Israel and Hamas.
• Wang's trip is more broadly seen as laying the groundwork for Chinese President Xi Jinping's attendance at November's APEC summit in San Francisco - his first US trip in over six years.