Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cheered on the sidelines at a basketball recreation in Shanghai on Wednesday evening, and spent Thursday chatting with college students at New York College’s Shanghai campus and assembly American enterprise house owners. All of it went to emphasise the form of financial, instructional and cultural ties that the US is pointedly holding up as useful for each international locations.

However hanging over these pleasantries throughout his go to to China this week are a number of steps the U.S. is taking to sever financial ties in areas the place the Biden administration says they threaten American pursuits. And people would be the focus of higher consideration from Chinese language officers, as properly.

Even because the Biden administration tries to stabilize the connection with China, it’s advancing a number of financial measures that may curb China’s entry to the U.S. economic system and know-how. It’s poised to boost tariffs on Chinese language metal, photo voltaic panels and different essential merchandise to attempt to shield American factories from low cost imports. It’s weighing additional restrictions on China’s entry to superior semiconductors to attempt to preserve Beijing from growing subtle synthetic intelligence that might be used on the battlefield.

This week, Congress additionally handed laws that may pressure ByteDance, the Chinese language proprietor of TikTok, to promote its stake within the app inside 9 to 12 months or depart the US altogether. The president signed it on Wednesday, although the measure is more likely to be challenged in court docket.

Mr. Blinken’s go to, which was anticipated to take him to Beijing on Friday for high-level authorities conferences, had a way more cordial tone than on the journey he made to China final yr. That journey was the primary after a Chinese language spy balloon traveled throughout the US, tipping the American public into an uproar.

In a gathering with the Shanghai Communist Celebration secretary Thursday morning, Mr. Blinken stated direct engagement between the U.S. and China was each priceless and mandatory.

“We have now an obligation for our folks — certainly an obligation to the world — to handle the connection between our two international locations responsibly,” he stated.

Chatting with college students on the N.Y.U.’s Shanghai campus later that morning, he stated the tutorial exchanges the scholars had been engaged in supplied a “ballast” for a sophisticated and confrontational relationship.

Since President Biden met with the Chinese language chief, Xi Jinping, in California in November, the U.S.-China relationship has appeared extra secure, with nothing just like the dramatic ups and downs of the commerce spats underneath former President Donald J. Trump.

However the Biden administration has nonetheless been marching towards a extra restrictive financial relationship with China.

That features controls on semiconductor know-how, that are being raised by either side as a extra distinguished problem than ever earlier than. The Biden administration has been weighing additional export controls, notably on factories which have been serving to produce superior semiconductors for the Chinese language tech big Huawei.

“By explicitly making an attempt to degrade Chinese language tech capabilities, particularly on superior AI, the US has moved export controls to the forefront of the U.S.-China agenda,” stated Emily Benson, a commerce skilled on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, a Washington assume tank.

In a name between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi earlier this month, each leaders raised the know-how controls as issues of central significance.

Mr. Biden emphasised that the US would proceed to take mandatory actions to forestall superior American applied sciences from getting used to undermine its personal nationwide safety, with out unduly limiting commerce and funding, in accordance with the White Home.

Mr. Xi stated that placing new sanctions on China was not “de-risking,” however creating dangers. If the US was bent on “containing China’s hi-tech growth and depriving China of its authentic proper to growth, China is just not going to take a seat again and watch,” he stated, according to the official Xinhua Information Company.

U.S. officers say their restrictions are mandatory given China’s authoritarian authorities and statist financial mannequin. However the strikes have rankled Chinese language leaders and pushed tensions over financial measures to their highest level in years.

The measures usually are not simply emanating from the U.S. authorities: Susan Shirk, the creator of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceable Rise,” stated that China had pivoted towards a extra self-sufficient industrial coverage, and has been searching for to supplant the US as a high-tech superpower underneath Mr. Xi.

“Xi overtly acknowledges that whereas he desires China to be much less depending on different international locations, he desires to maintain different international locations depending on China ‘as a strong countermeasure and deterrent’ as he put it, ‘in opposition to them slicing off provide,’” Ms. Shirk stated.

China, too, has allowed safety issues to have an effect on a higher proportion of its economic system, at the same time as Mr. Xi and different Chinese language leaders have tried to reassure overseas companies that their funding is welcome. A brand new nationwide safety legislation has prolonged Beijing’s attain into Hong Kong, threatening town’s standing as a monetary hub. American executives have been alarmed by China’s investigations of overseas corporations, in addition to the nation’s broader guidelines in opposition to sharing information and data with foreigners.

Regardless of China’s complaints in regards to the U.S. authorities’s efforts to crack down on TikTok, China itself has for many years banned different Western social media providers. Apple stated final week that Beijing had ordered it to take away WhatsApp and Threads from app shops in China.

Mr. Blinken and different U.S. officers have emphasised that American export controls, sanctions and different restrictions being imposed on Chinese language tech firms apply to solely a small fraction of the broader U.S.-China relationship. Elsewhere, commerce is inspired, they are saying.

In a report this week, the U.S.-China Enterprise Council, a gaggle of 270 American firms that do enterprise in China, estimated that U.S. exports to China supported greater than 900,000 American jobs in 2022, although items exports fell in 2023 as a consequence of China’s lackluster economic system, U.S. tariffs and different elements.

“It will be significant for us to remind U.S. lawmakers and people in influential positions that each state and congressional district within the U.S. maintains its personal financial and commerce relationship with China, and modifications in U.S.-China commerce coverage ought to be thought-about very rigorously,” stated Craig Allen, the group’s president.