BEIJING – The US ambassador to China will resign early next month, ending a three-year term marked by an industrial war and bitter relations between the world’s two largest economies.
Terry Branstad, appointed through President Donald Trump in 2017, showed his resolution in a phone call with Trump last week, announced Monday’s U. S. embassy in a statement, and gave an explanation of the reason for his departure.
“I am very proud of our paintings to conclude the Phase 1 industry agreement and to achieve tangible effects for our communities at home,” he said at an embassy assembly on Monday.
News of his departure was leaked earlier the day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thanked Branstad on Twitter for his service.
“Ambassador Branstad has helped rebalance U. S. -China relations into results, reciprocal and equitable,” Pompeo wrote in a follow-up tweet.
China’s Foreign Ministry said before the embassy announcement that, aware of Pompeo’s tweet, it had not yet received notification of Branstad’s departure.
Branstad became pregnant in a recent controversy when the official Chinese people’s newspaper rejected a column of opinion he had written.
Pompeo tweeted last week that china’s ruling Communist Party refused to publish Branstad’s editorial while China’s ambassador to the United States “cannot publish it in any American medium. “
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded that Branstad’s article “is full of flaws, seriously inconsistent with the facts, and attacks and denigrating China for no reason. “
The U. S. Embassy contacted People’s Daily on August 26 about the article, requesting that it be published in full without any adjustment before September 4, People’s Daily said in an online publication.
Branstad, 73, is from Iowa and served as governor of the main agricultural state for 22 years for two terms, from 1983 to 1999 and from 2011 to 2017.
Early in his first term, he met with Xi Jinping, now China’s leader, when the then leader of the Communist County Party visited Iowa in an industry in 1985.
Trump appointed him ambassador after a month gap in which embassy leader David Rank resigned after criticizing the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Shortly after arriving in Beijing in June 2017, Branstad welcomed U. S. beef to the Chinese market after a 14-year ban, stating, “I know that reducing the industry deficit is a key precedent for the president, and that’s one way we can do it. that. “
But industry relations temporarily deteriorated when the United States imposed price lists on Chinese products and China retaliated in the same way. Other conflicts over technology, human rights and reaction to the coronavirus pandemic followed.
Branstad joined U. S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and U. S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in industry talks with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing in May 2019.
The phase one agreement reached in January this year represented a truce, but it addressed the maximum number of basic court cases on the U. S. side.
The U. S. Embassy also highlighted Branstad’s role in efforts to reduce the flow of fentanyl from China to the United States, adding a 2018 pact in which China agreed to include opioids as a controlled substance.
Branstad also made a rare trip to Tibet in May 2019, where he expressed fear of what the United States has called chinese government interference in the freedom of Tibetan Buddhists to organize and practice their religion.
“He encouraged the Chinese government to interact in a substantive discussion with the Dalai Lama or his representatives, without preconditions, to seek an agreement to resolve disputes,” an embassy said at the time.
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