Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen on Friday criticized the Chinese authorities’s harsh therapy of corporations with overseas ties and its current determination to impose export controls on sure important minerals, suggesting that such actions justify the Biden administration’s efforts to make U.S. producers much less reliant on China.

Ms. Yellen delivered the forceful protection of American trade on her first day of conferences in Beijing throughout a high-stakes trip to ease tension between the United States and China. Her feedback, to a gaggle of executives from American companies working in China, underscored challenges that the world’s two largest economies face as they appear to maneuver past their deep variations.

“During meetings with my counterparts, I am communicating the concerns that I’ve heard from the U.S. business community — including China’s use of nonmarket tools like expanded subsidies for its state-owned enterprises and domestic firms, as well as barriers to market access for foreign firms,” Ms. Yellen advised members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China at a round-table occasion. “I’ve been particularly troubled by punitive actions that have been taken against U.S. firms in recent months.” Representatives of Boeing, Bank of America and the agriculture large Cargill had been amongst these in attendance.

In March, the Chinese authorities detained five Chinese nationals working in Beijing for the Mintz Group, an American consulting firm with 18 workplaces world wide, and closed the department. The subsequent month, the authorities questioned employees within the Shanghai workplace of Bain & Company, the U.S. administration consulting agency.

Scrutiny of American companies working in China adopted restrictions that the Biden administration imposed on China’s entry to important semiconductor-making know-how and instruments.

The Biden administration is making ready further restrictions on U.S. know-how commerce with China, together with potential limits on advanced chips and U.S. investment in the country. The administration can also be making ready to limit Chinese corporations’ entry to U.S. cloud computing services, in an effort to shut a loophole in earlier restrictions on China’s entry to superior chips used for synthetic intelligence.

The tit-for-tat continued this week when Beijing retaliated in opposition to the Biden administration’s limits on semiconductors, asserting that it could limit the export of sure important minerals used within the manufacturing of some chips.

An official from China’s ministry of finance expressed hope on Friday that the conferences with Ms. Yellen would enhance financial relations and urged that the United States must take steps to make that occur. The official added that neither nation advantages from “decoupling” and disrupting provide chains.

Ms. Yellen mentioned on Friday that she was “concerned” by China’s determination to enact the export controls.

“We are still evaluating the impact of these actions, but they remind us of the importance of building resilient and diversified supply chains,” Ms. Yellen mentioned. She urged that further responses from the United States might be looming to make sure that American companies and staff had been handled pretty.

“I will always champion your interests and work to make sure there is a level playing field,” Ms. Yellen added. “This includes coordinating with our allies to respond to China’s unfair economic practices.”

Businesses are additionally alarmed by China’s ever-tightening national security laws, which embody a stringent counterespionage law that took impact on Saturday. The U.S. State Department issued a warning this week advising Americans to rethink touring to China due to the opportunity of wrongful detention.

The Treasury secretary deliberate to lift these points throughout a blitz of conferences with high Chinese officers over the following two days.

Besides the enterprise leaders, Ms. Yellen was additionally assembly on Friday with Liu He, China’s former vice premier, and Yi Gang, the outgoing governor of the People’s Bank of China. A Treasury Department official mentioned that Ms. Yellen mentioned the outlook for the economic system in an off-the-cuff dialogue along with her former counterparts that lasted greater than an hour.

Later on Friday afternoon, she is going to meet with Premier Li Qiang on the Great Hall of the People.

Claire Fu contributed reporting.