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Can China-US breadbasket diplomacy sidestep tension over American’s arrest?
Farm-belt officials from both sides meet as US voters consider issues for midterms and Beijing detains US citizen
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Officials from key US farm-belt states joined their Chinese provincial counterparts on Tuesday in a cooperation dialogue, the latest pivot towards closer engagement following President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing and ahead of the critical US midterm elections.
The major subnational dialogue – co-hosted by the Henan provincial government in central China and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries – took place under a cloud, with the US State Department issuing a rare flurry of travel warnings for China after Beijing detained an American citizen.
More than 200 representatives – including those from US battleground states such as Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as universities such as Harvard and Yale – convened in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
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The Chinese side comprised officials from Henan, Liaoning, Anhui, Hunan and Shaanxi provinces, the agricultural heavyweights of the world’s second-largest economy.
Yang Wanming, a veteran Chinese diplomat who heads the Chinese association, said agriculture was a critical pillar of the bilateral relationship.
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