US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in India to attend the annual G20 summit. She held a news conference in New Delhi on Friday, saying she is monitoring the Chinese economy "carefully."
Yellen said China faces a variety of "global challenges," which include consumer spending that is weaker than was anticipated after the lifting of strict Covid restrictions, debt that is hampering the real estate sector and a shrinking labor force.
She said she does not see the US being directly impacted by these factors, but she is "keeping an eye" on some countries in East Asia that she thinks are "more likely to be affected." Still, she added that she thinks China has "quite a bit of policy space" to address the challenges.
Officials in the Biden administration have called China's overseas lending and infrastructure projects "coercive and unsustainable." They say the World Bank and other multilateral development banks can serve as a "credible alternative."
Yellen said she will work to build support from G20 members to increase the lending resources of those institutions.