A booming china faults u.s. policy on the economy

Not long ago, Chinese officials sat across conference tabular array from American officials and got an earful.

The Americans scolded the Chinese on mismanaging their economic system, from state subsidies to foreign investment ordinance to the evaluation of their currency. Your economic system, the Americans strongly implied, should look a lot more like ours.

But in recent weeks, the fingers have been wagging in the other way. Senior Chinese officials are publically and loud rebuking the Americans on their handling of the economic system and defending their own more assertive style of ordinance.

Chinese functionary seem to be galled by the apparent hypocrisy of Americans telling them what to do while the American economy is at best stagnant. China, on the other hand, has maintained its feverish growing.

Some functionary are promoting a Chinese style of economic management that they suggest serves development countries good than the American model, in much the same way they argue that they are in no hurry to copy American-style multiparty democracy.

In the last six weeks alone, a senior banking regulator blamed Washington D.C.'s "warped conception" of marketplace regulation for the subprime mortgage crisis that is rattle the world economic system; the Chinese envoy to the World Trade organisation called on the United States to halt the dollar's unchecked depreciation earlier the slide further worsens glide oil and food terms; and Chinese agencies denounced a Federal soldier committee charged with vetting foreign investing in the United States, expression the Americans were screening "hostility" and a "discriminatory attitude," not least toward the Chinese.

All this reflects a brash new sense of assurance on the part of the Chinese. China seems to feel remarkably bold earlier the summertime Olympics, seen here as a drape raiser for the state's acclivity to pre-eminence in the world. The devastating earthquake last month helped by turning world sympathy toward China and dampening criticism of its handling of Tibet.

The Chinese attitude is no doubt bolstered by the lame-duck status of the Bush administration and by the fact that the United States is widely seen as having squandered its political and military leadership during the war in Iraq, which China opposed. Likewise, Chinese officials and state news media have suggested that the relatively quick mobilization of the Chinese Army during the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province contrasts favorably with the Bush administration's reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

The aggressive stand comes at an inopportune moment for the White House. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. And other cabinet members are to meet with Chinese officials in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday in the latest round of semiannual economic talks. The Americans have a laundry list of complaints, among them that the Chinese use regulations to favor domestic companies over foreign rivals and that Beijing does too little to police the theft of copyrights and patents held by Western companies.

The United States is also pressing China to address concerns about the safety of food and drugs it exports.

But China has its own list of grievances, topped by management of the dollar and restrictions on foreign investment in the United States. And the Americans could find themselves with little negotiating leverage.

"U.S. Credibility and the credibility of U.S. Financial markets is zero everywhere in the world," said Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University who has sharply criticized the Bush administration and praised China's economic management in the past. "Anybody looking at this from the outside says, 'There's been a lot of hot air coming out of the U.S., so why should we listen to these guys when they didn't know how to manage risk?' "

Here in China, economic observers are noting that the Chinese posture toward the Americans has decidedly shifted.

"This time, the Chinese side is trying to change its attitude to be more active, to be more aggressive, to balance the two sides," said Song Hongbing, author of "The Currency War," a best-selling if conspiratorial book on the American economy. "They just started to change their attitude for the future."

Chinese officials are expressing their disdain in forums around the world. Last month, Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, delivered a lecture at the British Museum in London in which he blamed the American government for the subprime mortgage crisis that came close to freezing Western debt markets and required extensive intervention by the Federal Reserve. The turmoil, he said, was "counteracting the course of global civilization."

"Does moneymaking or doing business justify the regulators in ignoring their duty for prudential supervision and their job of preventing misbehavior?" he said.