Farm-belt officials from both sides meet as US voters consider issues for midterms and Beijing detains US citizen
3-MIN READ3-MIN1 ListenLaura ZhouPublished: 10:00pm, 17 Jun 2026Updated: 10:17pm, 17 Jun 2026Officials 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.
The Chinese side comprised officials from Henan, Liaoning, Anhui, Hunan and Shaanxi provinces, the agricultural heavyweights of the world’s second-largest economy.
