Financial Times: China tells US to put its house in order

China tells US to put its house in order

By James Kynge in Beijing, Chris Giles in London and James Harding in Santiago

Published: November 22 2004 18:36 Last updated: November 22 2004 18:36

In a mark of China's growing economic confidence, the country's central bank has offered blunt advice to Washington about its ballooning trade deficit and unemployment.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Li Ruogu, the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, warned the US not to blame other countries for its economic difficulties.

“China's custom is that we never blame others for our own problem,” said the senior central bank official. “For the past 26 years, we never put pressure or problems on to the world. The US has the reverse attitude, whenever they have a problem, they blame others.”

Mr Li insisted an appreciation of the Chinese currency would not solve the US's structural problems and that although China was “gradually” moving towards greater exchange rate flexibility, it would not do so under heavy external pressure.

“Under heavy speculation we cannot move [towards greater flexibility] and under heavy external pressure we cannot,” said Mr Li. “So the best environment for us to gradually move towards a more flexible exchange rate is when people don't talk about it.”

His comments will disappoint US, Japanese and European politicians. Pressure has mounted on the Chinese administration to revalue the renmimbi or to increase the flexibility of the Chinese exchange rate over the past two years.

Mr Li said China could only permit greater renminbi flexibility after creating a domestic financial infrastructure, including reformed banks and developed markets, able to cope with a more liberalised currency mechanism; considering the conditions and the wishes of neighbouring Asian economies on any move towards a more flexible system; and educating people on how to deal with a new exchange rate system, teaching them how to hedge.

Mr Li, who spoke before a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum last weekend, said China did not want to run trade surpluses or accumulate foreign currency reserves. Its reserves stand at $515bn.

“If there is a small deficit, we are not concerned. But certainly we don't want to run into the US situation of having a trade deficit of 6 per cent of GDP,” he said.

“That is not sustainable,” he added. “The appreciation of the RMB will not solve the problems of unemployment in the US because the cost of labour in China is only 3 per cent that of US labour they should give up textiles, shoe-making and even agriculture probably.

“They should concentrate on sectors like aerospace and then sell those things to us and we would spend billions on this. We could easily balance the trade.”

China's timetable for freeing up the renminbi is expected to have an impact on sales of US goods to the mammoth and growing Chinese market as well as the consumption of Chinese goods in America.

The recent, adjustment to Chinese interest rates is seen by some in Washington as evidence that Beijing accepts administrative measures that are no longer an effective means of managing an increasingly liberalised market.

At last weekend's G20 meeting, finance ministers and central bank governors called for a global effort to reduce trade imbalances, and in partiuclar, the US current account deficit. John Snow, the US treasury secretary, repeated his commitment to work towards halving the US budget defict and to increase net US national saving, which would reduce the current account deficit.

But President George W. Bush's assurances at the weekend that his administration is committed to a strong dollar policy appeared to do little on Monday to encourage buying of the dollar, evidence of how far the White House's credibility on currencies has been undermined by the rising deficit. In mid day trading in New York the dollar was at 1.304 against the euro and 103.21 against the yen.