China Balks as Geithner Presses on Iran Curbs Pool photo by Andy Wong Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, right, and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China met in Beijing on Wednesday. BEIJING - Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Treasury secretary, pressed Chinese senior leaders Wednesday to join an American-led campaign to put pressure Iran over its nuclear program by sharply reducing Tehran's lucrative oil export business. And as they had before Mr. Geithner's arrival here Tuesday, Chinese officials said publicly that they wanted no part of it. But the administration of President Barack Obama, armed with a new law that would punish foreign financial institutions that deal with Iran, appeared undeterred. "We are in the early stages of a broad global diplomatic effort to take advantage of this new legislation to significantly intensify the pressure on Iran," a senior administration official said Wednesday. We are telling them what's important to us, and they are listening. The official insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues. The discussions on Iran were a highlight of separate meetings with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China, Vice President Xi Jinping and Vice Prime Minister Li Keqiang that covered the landscape of economic and trade relations between the two nations. Because the Treasury Department enforces American sanction laws, Mr. Geithner spent time explaining the new legislation, which would generally deny access to the U.S. financial system to foreign financial institutions that do business with the Iranian central bank. The law exempts institutions in nations that achieve "significant reduction" in Iranian oil imports. How much is significant is not defined, giving the White House broad leeway to promise dispensations to big oil purchasers that make at least some effort to meet the requirement. China is among Iran's biggest oil customers, relying on Tehran for more than 11 percent of its oil imports and 5 percent of its entire oil inventory, and it has extensive business interests in the Iranian oil industry. Although China has carried out U.N. sanctions on Iran, it also has worked hard to water down sanctions proposals that have gone before the Security Council. On Wednesday, a Chinese foreign affairs vice minister, Zhai Jun, dismissed the latest American proposal, just as a second vice minister, Cui Tiankai, had in a meeting with foreign journalists Monday. We oppose pressuring or international sanctions because these pressures and sanctions are not helpful. They have not solved any issues," he said. We believe these problems should be solved by dialogue. But the Obama administration tends to discount Beijing's public statements and instead watches what the government does. Mr. Geithner also pressed the Chinese on a range of U.S. economic and trade concerns, including complaints by American businesses that Chinese companies continued to steal their intellectual property, like software and industrial technology, and that Beijing denied American companies equal access to its markets. He also pressed the Chinese again to allow their currency, the renminbi, to appreciate faster against the dollar. The United States says the value of the renminbi is deliberately kept low to give Chinese products a price advantage in export markets. China has said that the renminbi will slowly continue to gain value. But while some Chinese experts want the currency to appreciate more rapidly, the political consensus within the government has limited its rise. Renminbi on losing streak The renminbi experienced its longest losing streak in more than two years Wednesday on speculation that policy makers would slow currency appreciation as the outlook for growth in the Chinese economy dimmed, Bloomberg News reported from Hong Kong. The renminbi fell 0.01 percent to close at 6.3155 per dollar in Shanghai, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The currency declined for a sixth day, its most extensive period of losses since August 2009. "The yuan dropped, as investors are getting more worried about China's economic growth and capital outflows," said Banny Lam, a Hong Kong-based economist at CCB International Securities.