China taps World Bank official for U.S.-facing finance post
China is adding a new face to its trade negotiation team by
appointing its chief representative at the World Bank to head the Finance
Ministry’s international cooperation department, three people with direct
knowledge of the matter said.
Yang Yingming, who has been Executive Director for China at
the World Bank in Washington since 2016, returns to the finance ministry months
after Beijing and Washington completed a Phase 1 agreement that brought a truce
to their bitter trade war, although bilateral tensions remain at their worst in
decades.
Yang, who is among a group of rising Chinese economic
policymakers with international experience, told some of his colleagues
recently in Washington that he was returning to China to work on G-20
coordination and Sino-U.S. trade talks, two of them said, speaking on condition
of anonymity.
Yang, the finance ministry, and the World Bank’s Beijing
office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yang, who studied English literature at Beijing Foreign
Studies University and development economics at the University of Manchester in
Britain, was also executive director for China at the Asian Development Bank
until 2012, before moving to the finance ministry.
Yang is a fluent English speaker known for openness and a
sense of humour, two of the people said, declining to be named as they were not
authorized to speak to media.
The appointment further reflects Beijing’s keenness to
maintain engagement and prevent ties worsening, said Li Mingjiang, associate
professor at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang
Technological University in Singapore.
Beijing and Washington have had limited high-level
engagement this year as they square off over a range of friction points, from
the coronavirus to Hong Kong, although China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held talks in Hawaii earlier this month.
“Both sides still want to face their problems and resolve
them through negotiation, instead of heading towards decoupling,” said Li.
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