Hillary Clinton presses China to keep buying US debt

Also absent was any repeat of the recent charges of currency manipulation, voiced less than a month ago by Timothy Geithner during his confirmation hearings as US treasury secretary. Despite this discrete silence on the part of Washington, trade tensions are continuing to mount.

On Monday, just after Clinton left China, a top official in the country's steel industry denounced the "Buy American" provision introduced into the US stimulus package as a violation of rules set by the World Trade Organization. "Such a clause violates the rules of the World Trade Organization," Luo Bingsheng, vice-chairman of China Iron and Steel Association, told China Daily. "It is an act of discrimination against steel products not from only China but other economies, such as Japan, South Korea and Europe."

Despite the evident attempts by Clinton to subordinate all other issues to securing Beijing's agreement to continue purchasing US debt, the objective crisis is rapidly undermining the entire debt-recycling arrangement.

China's role in this process stems from its emergence over the past three decades as the principal cheap-labor platform for corporations from around the world, creating elevated profit rates for them and substantial exchange surpluses for China itself