An unnamed senior US Treasury official, in London yesterday at the Group of Seven (G7) meeting of finance ministers, said the US Treasury Undersecretary had called moves to coerce China to revalue its currency counterproductive.

John Taylor was reported to have "acknowledged that there are some initiatives in Congress that would not be productive toward moving forward," during a meeting with Finance Minister Jin Renqing earlier on Friday.

At least a dozen senators from both President George W. Bush's Republican Party and the opposition Democrats have agreed to co-sponsor a bill that would give China a six-month deadline to revalue the yuan or face a 27.5 percent tariff on all its exports to the US.

"There are some pressures in Congress that would move back the economic and financial diplomacy that has moved forward," the anonymous US official said, "The path we are on is bearing results. The path we've chosen is the right path."

In earlier remarks to reporters, Taylor appealed to China to "move as quickly as possible towards a flexible exchange rate."

But he added: "Our discussions with the Chinese have been good and candid."

Taylor had stood in for Treasury Secretary John Snow, absent with a chest cold.

At a Foreign Ministry press briefing on February 3, spokesperson Kong Quan said the move by some US senators cannot help resolve differences between the?two countries.

"Every country's economic and financial policies are established and implemented in accordance to their own specific situations," he said.

(China Daily February 5, 2005)