Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in an attempt to partially smooth over the increasingly rocky relationship between the world’s two largest economies. Now it’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s turn.

Yellen’s trip to Beijing, this Thursday through Sunday, comes at an especially delicate time in U.S.-China relations. Yellen and her aides are setting a low bar on reaching specific deals. There won’t be any concrete, written agreements between the U.S. and Chinese delegations, and the back-and-forth over export controls, predatory trade practices, and sanctions won’t be resolved. Yellen is also dealing with a new colleague on the Chinese side, Vice Premier He Lifeng, who doesn’t have an economics background and is known as a Xi loyalist.

In this case, then, no news is probably good news. While Yellen’s portfolio is different than Blinken’s, the two are following the same strategy: trying to arrest a further deterioration of relations by clearly expressing Washington’s position and sowing a path for continued senior-level exchanges. All of this sounds pretty easy and straightforward. In an ideal world, it would be.

Unfortunately, the U.S.-China relationship has become so hostile, perhaps even toxic, of late that even talking is difficult. While bilateral trade may have reached nearly $700 billion last year, the U.S. and China view the economic sphere as another front — and perhaps the main front — in their increasingly tense geopolitical rivalry. The Chinese are still smarting over the Biden administration’s October 2022 decision to restrict the export of high-end chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China. While that was a move designed to hinder the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities, it hurts China’s civilian technological development as well. The White House is reportedly close to finalizing an executive order that would restrict outbound U.S. investment in Chinese industries, like artificial intelligence, that could have military applications. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the administration is also debating a rule that would prevent U.S. cloud computing services such as Microsoft and Amazon from operating in the Chinese market.

China is retaliating. In April, China issued a new counterespionage law which could bring any U.S. company operating in China under the scrutiny of the Chinese government. In May, Beijing banned U.S. chip maker Micron Technology over undefined national security concerns. And last week, China imposed export controls on raw materials used for semiconductor chip manufacturing, retaliation for what Beijing sees as an ever-tightening U.S. export control regime meant to keep it from emerging as a technological superpower. Former Chinese officials are broadcasting that more of these types of measures are a certainty if the status quo continues.

The question isn't whether this tech war between the U.S. and China will continue — it most certainly will. The question, rather, is whether senior officials like Janet Yellen and He Lifeng can keep a level head, maintain open, durable lines of communication, and prevent bilateral ties from careening completely off the edge.

It’s the foreign policy equivalent of a shoeless balancing act on a 200-foot high beam with shark-infested waters on one side and hellfire on the other. One can only hope the two powers find a way. As hard-line as the rhetoric might get, neither of them want to stumble into a full-blown conflict.

Daniel DePetris ( @DanDePetris ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.