Hands Off, China Tells G7 on Eve of Talks

DUBAI (Reuters) - China bluntly told the United States on Friday not to make it a scapegoat for its economic woes by pressing for a revaluation of the yuan at this weekend's meeting of the world's leading industrial powers.

The need for China and other Asian nations to let their currencies rise to help iron out major imbalances threatening the global economy will be a major talking point when Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers gather on Saturday in Dubai.

With the U.S. presidential election less than 14 months away, Washington in particular has been urging Beijing to act to deflect pressure from U.S. manufacturers who blame job losses on what they say is an unfairly undervalued Chinese currency.

But the China Daily, in a commentary seen as reflecting the views of the government, dismissed repeated U.S. calls for a stronger yuan, also known as the renminbi, as futile.

"Making China the scapegoat can perhaps help some U.S. politicians score cheap political points, (but) it has nothing to do with the solution of their real problems," the paper said.

China won support for its position from the No. 2 of the German central bank, who echoed concerns expressed a day earlier by the IMF about the risks posed by America's gaping current account and budget deficits.

"We should not let the discussion about the yuan distract from the main problem of the U.S.'s twin deficits," Bundesbank Vice-President Juergen Stark told Reuters.

Other European officials, including European Central Bank President Wim Duisenberg, have also tiptoed into the yuan debate.

They point to the risks that freeing the yuan and opening China's closed capital account would pose for a country with a still-immature banking system saddled with bad loans.

"The big challenge for China is not so much allowing slightly more currency flexibility as capital account liberalization -- and that's a long-term issue," said Steve Gilmore, a foreign-exchange strategist with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.

China's long-standing policy is to loosen its grip on the yuan, which trades in a tight band around 8.28 per dollar, but at a time of its own choosing; it has pointedly reminded its critics that the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis happened in part because countries opened up their markets prematurely to massive flows of footloose global capital.

America's largest manufacturing group said on Wednesday it would file a trade complaint with the Bush administration over China's currency policy.

But several policymakers have warned in the run-up to the Dubai talks that overt pressure on Beijing would be counter- productive, and officials said any reference by the G7 to Asian currencies was likely to be couched in general terms.

"I don't think the communique will set a new direction for (the G7's) exchange rate policy," a British Treasury official said in London.

The power of anything the G7 does have to say will be weakened by the absence of French Finance Minister Francis Mer, who is staying home to focus on future of ailing engineering firm Alstom, and Japan's Masajuro Shiokawa, who is ill.

The other G7 members are the United States, Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada. They will meet on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Apart from controversy over Asia's currencies, the group will take stock of prospects for global growth, which the Washington-based IMF expects to accelerate to 4.1 percent in 2004 from 3.2 percent this year.

A vibrant global economy generating demand for U.S. goods is crucial to President Bush's re-election prospects and his Treasury Secretary, John Snow, chided other G7 members on Friday for not pulling their weight.

"We are concerned about many parts of the rest of the world in terms of their growth rates," Snow told a luncheon in Islamabad hosted by Pakistan's finance minister, Shaukat Aziz.

Snow said European economies were "stagnant basically" and that Japan had gone through "10 years of very anemic growth." In contrast, the United States was entering what he called a period of sustained and long-term growth.

"The United States can't be the only engine of growth," Snow, who was due in Dubai late on Friday, said.

The 184 members of the IMF are staging their annual meeting in the Middle East for the first time.

Security is predictably heavy, with hundreds of khaki-clad police guarding a new deluxe $210 million convention center where the talks will run until Wednesday.

Many people will go to the polls and hold their nose while they vote for the Rat party candidate if they think it will save their job.

Except the Rat party candidate won't and everybody knows it. The Commie and corporate puppet masters own the libs more completely than they own the Pubbies.

Dealing with the Globalists will be something we will have to do. i do not expect hyperinflation from these policies and they are limited enough to get past that I hope. Eventually all those dollars will be on teh market and if the we have weaned off imports enough before they get so dumped we may eb able to get out without disaster.

Every day of delay increases the risk.

A guy on another thread suggested that if the US COC wants the H1-B and L-1 program, fine.

Two rules:

1. They pay 100% of the prevailing wage
2. They pay a 10% surcharge on that wage to fund the unemployment benefits of the displaced American. Money to be used for benefit reimbursement and training in the same area for a displaced worker of the company's choice. Once that worker is up to snuff, then the company can make some decisions.

MY opinion is there should be no guest workers period they tend to corrupt a society. I do not have a problem with legal immigrants merely guest workers who by law have no immigrant status.

Well, if the issue truely is the economy, I'd suggest we get that tax relief in gear. That's a start. It'll reduce the pressure, and allow nations a better chance to sort this whole thing out.
(Not to mention this article is a left wing source. It's designed to create emotion, because fear sells democrat votes. Fear of their political enemy and the job he's doing is their form of Jahad against the rightous right. It's the only propaganda method they have left.)
Most libertarians probably didn't vote for Bush before, so they probably won't again.
I'd guess most of this thread is libertarian.

26 posted on 09/19/2003 6:27:21 PM PDT by concerned about politics (Lucifers lefties are still stuck at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy)

If Bush lets this insult to America stand he has lost my vote in '04. The damn ChiComs need to be put in their place.

If I got a dime everytime there was a "Bush Bash" thread , I'd be rich, rich, rich!
Well have fun. Let it out. Feel better. (This, too, shall pass - comfort one another with these words).

27 posted on 09/19/2003 6:45:37 PM PDT by concerned about politics (Lucifers lefties are still stuck at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy)

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