A stellar cast of US economic leaders heads to China this week to press for the world's manufacturing workshop to overhaul the desperately one-sided trade between the two nations.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke will head the US delegation for the inaugural meeting of a new "strategic economic dialogue" in Beijing on Thursday and Friday.
While designed to thrash out longer-term challenges thrown up by China's headlong growth, including energy and environmental issues, the dialogue will also have to cover immediate irritants like China's exchange rate regime.
A more flexible yuan would help China to allocate capital more efficiently, and so divert its mammoth savings to more productive uses, Paulson said Friday on the financial news network CNBC.