US urges China to step up currency reform

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States on Wednesday praised China's efforts to allow its yuan currency to appreciate to better reflect the strength of the Chinese economy, but said it was not moving fast enough.

"The untold story of our approach to China's currency policy is that it is working, albeit more slowly than we would like," David McCormick, Treasury under secretary for international affairs, said in a speech in New York.

After moving the yuan, or renminbi, away from a pegged exchange rate to the US dollar in July 2005, "China's actions were cautious, with the RMB appreciating slowly," McCormick said in the text of his prepared remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations.

But more recently, "the pace of appreciation has increased sharply, to roughly...