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Summary US officials have been accusing China for a long time of keeping its currency artificially low.
Chinese state media have accused US President Barack Obama of scapegoating Beijing for his countrys economic woes after he hit out at Chinas currency policy.Obama on Sunday betrayed increasing frustration over Beijings control of the yuan, saying it has not done enough to allow the unit to reach a fair market level and calling on a now grown up China to act more responsibly.The official Xinhua news agency accused Obama of using the issue to attract votes, and said forcing the yuan to appreciate more quickly would bankrupt Chinese companies without resolving the US trade deficit with China.US officials have long accused China of keeping its currency artificially low, fuelling a flow of cheap exports that has helped send the US trade deficit with China to more $270 billion in 2010.The issue has come to the political forefront in recent months, ahead of the US presidential elections in November next year.Speaking after an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that witnessed a toughening of the US line towards Beijing, Obama said that while there had been slight improvement (in the yuan) over the last year, this was not enough.The US president also called on China to act more responsibly and address trade imbalances. Now theyve grown up, and so theyre going to have to help manage this process in a responsible way, he said.China defends its exchange rate regime, saying it is moving gradually to make the yuan currency more flexible.Last month, the US Senate, controlled by Obamas Democratic Party, approved a bill to impose punitive taxes on Chinese imports if the yuan is not revalued, drawing an angry response from Beijing.A separate editorial on Tuesday in the state-run Global Times, a daily known for its nationalistic stance, said the United States felt insecure in the face of a rising China and Washington would have to accept that its economy was in decline.Obama, seeking re-election next year as many heartland Americans think they lost their jobs to lower-wage China, told President Hu Jintao at the APEC summit that Americans were impatient for a change in Beijings economic policy.But Hu said that a big rise in his countrys exchange rate would not solve problems faced by the United States, according to an account of the meeting posted on Chinas foreign ministry website.
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