China-US talks: Trade envoy He Lifeng’s mission impossible?

In a breakthrough after more than a month of stalemate on tariffs, China and the US will engage in talks in Switzerland this week, as announced on 7 May. The key figure of the US negotiating team will be US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has a Wall Street background, while the Chinese side will be led by Vice-Premier He Lifeng, a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The US Treasury Department’s press release on Bessent’s visit to Switzerland provided no details about his Chinese counterpart or the meeting’s agenda. Similarly, the Office of the US Trade Representative confirmed that Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also travel to Switzerland for talks with his Chinese counterpart, yet did not specify who would attend or what topics would be discussed.

However, in answer to queries, a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson confirmed that He Lifeng will meet with Bessent. The spokesperson elaborated on Beijing’s stance and considerations for attending the meeting, emphasising that China agreed to engage with the US “taking into account global expectations, national interests, and calls from the American industry and consumers”. At the same time, the spokesperson reiterated China’s resolve to safeguard its own development interests and requested the US to “demonstrate sincerity” and “correct its wrong practices”.

This meeting marks the formal transition of China-US economic and trade negotiations from the Liu He era during the Trump 1.0 period to the He Lifeng era.

Liu, who led the Chinese side in the China-US comprehensive economic dialogue during Trump’s first presidency, is a “scholarly” official. He never held a local government position but instead engaged in policy research and acted as a policy advisor for an extended period, earning the appreciation of CCP leaders in this capacity. He has also studied abroad, having gone to the US twice in the 1990s to further his studies. He earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and is seen as an open-minded reformist.

He’s experience is vastly different from Liu’s. The 70-year-old rose through the local bureaucracy, and graduated from the Department of Public Finance and Economics at Xiamen University with a doctorate in economics. He worked in Fujian province for 25 years, holding leading positions in Quanzhou, Fuzhou and Xiamen, and is one of the main representatives of the “Fujian faction” within the top echelons of the CCP.

In 2009, He moved north to Tianjin, where he served as deputy party secretary of the municipality, head of the working committee of Binhai New Area, and chairman of the Tianjin People’s Political Consultative Conference. In 2014, he joined the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), often referred to as the “mini State Council”, and was promoted to director of the NDRC in 2017.

Some analysts believe that after becoming director of the NDRC, he played a significant role in China’s economic shift towards state dominance. At the CCP’s 20th Party Congress in 2022, He became a Politburo member; in March the following year, he succeeded Liu as vice-premier.

Western media outlets have observed an increase in He’s exposure in foreign affairs settings over the past year, and a shift in his public image. According to a Reuters review of public reports, He has held at least 60 meetings with foreign figures in the past year, a steady increase compared to the 45 meetings he held between March 2023, when he took office as vice-premier, and March 2024.

Some foreign investors and diplomats who have interacted with He told Reuters that this official has gradually transformed from a stiff Communist Party apparatchik with non-existent English and a reluctance to stray from prepared remarks into a more confident figure who has impressed them with his ability to get things done. An individual who has met He multiple times, including as recently as March this year, described past discussions with the senior CCP official as akin to “talking to ChatGPT”. However, they noted that He has recently started to communicate in a way that appeals more to Western executives.

As someone who served alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping in Fujian, He has a close relationship with the Chinese leader and is deeply trusted by him. This special relationship has always attracted public attention, with many believing it allows him to more accurately explain Beijing’s stance, deliver on promises that other officials might not be able to fulfil, and faithfully execute the will and policies of the top leader.

With the China-US tariff war turning into a game of chicken, the manner in which negotiations are done, whether a result can be achieved, and what kind of result is achieved can all become political questions. Although He is not a technocrat, the high-level political backing he enjoys makes him a more suitable negotiator compared to others. 

However, no one is optimistic about whether He can break the ice. Recalling the China-US trade war during Trump’s first presidency, both sides had engaged in numerous consultations in Beijing and Washington in the first half of 2018, and reached a consensus to “not fight a trade war” at one point. But the good times did not last long — the Trump administration quickly backtracked, and China simultaneously announced retaliatory measures, wiping out the hard-won results of the negotiations. China and the US then entered a period of “fighting while negotiating” for over a year, and finally signed the phase one trade deal on 15 January 2020. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors, the agreement was largely unfulfilled.

Trump has now meandered his way back to the White House, and the China-US trade war has reignited. Liu has been replaced with He, and the US negotiating team has shifted from Robert Lighthizer and Steven Mnuchin to Bessent and Greer. However, the negotiations of seven years ago are still fresh in people’s minds.

China is expected to maintain its “bottom line” approach. On the same day Beijing announced negotiations with the US, it introduced a slew of supportive measures, including policy rate and reserve requirement ratio cuts, to support the real economy, capital market, and real estate sector, seemingly preparing for a protracted battle. Similarly, Washington will not make concessions easily. In the US Treasury Department’s press release, Bessent asserted that “economic security is national security” and that the US is committed to “rebalancing the international economic system towards better serving the interests of the United States”.

Compared to seven years ago, trust between China and the US has become more fragile. This will make negotiations more difficult and consensus harder to reach. However, the unprecedentedly high tariffs are also pushing both sides’ tolerance to the limit, compelling them to sit down and talk. The meeting in Switzerland is likely to be an opportunity for both sides to probe each other’s bottom lines and clarify their stance. It is unlikely to bring about a China-US reconciliation that the outside world hopes to see, but the fact that both sides are taking this first step is already a rare glimmer of hope.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “何立峰能否为中美谈判僵局破冰？”.

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