US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo has arrived in China, where she is aiming to boost business ties and tourism between the world’s two largest economies despite Washington’s move to ban American investment in sensitive Chinese technologies.Raimondo, the fourth senior Biden administration official to visit Beijing this summer, said she would stress that the US did not want to “decouple” from China’s economy. But she insisted protecting national security was “the top priority, period”.

“The US and China share a large, dynamic, growing economic relationship, one of the largest trade relationships in the world,” Raimondo told reporters ahead of her trip. “Both of our countries, in fact the entire world, need us to manage that relationship responsibly.”

US president Joe Biden this month announced a ban on American investment in some of China’s critical tech industries, including quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence.