It has been announced that Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner will travel to Nanjing next week to attend an international financial conference. From ABC News:
The Treasury Department says that Geithner will be in Nanjing, China, next Thursday for meetings with senior Chinese officials. They’ll discuss the global economic outlook and prepare for high-level U.S.-China talks on economic and foreign policy concerns, scheduled to take place in Washington later this year.
While in Nanjing, Geithner will attend a seminar with finance officials from other countries to review the functioning of the international monetary system. The conference was the idea of finance officials from France, who are heading up the Group of 20 major industrialized countries this year.
Last month at the Group of 20 meeting, talks of getting China to appreciate its currency seemed to dominate the informal agenda. From Reuters:
Talks at a Group of 20 meeting in Paris centered round efforts, led by Germany and G20 presidents France, to persuade China to include its yawning current account surplus and undervalued currency in a list of measures aimed to start a process of rebalancing the global economy.
China stuck to its guns, saying currency reform was a matter for internal discussion; the final G20 communique made no mention of foreign currency reserves and included softened references to exchange rates and the current account.
That came after “frank, sometimes tense” negotiations over a set of indicators for gauging economic imbalances and suggested more progress will not be easy on an issue western governments hope will allow them to put more pressure on Beijing.
It remains to be seen if talks about China’s exchange rates will continue to be a key theme at this upcoming conference.
