US Treasury SecretaryTimothy Geithner said further appreciation in the yuan is important to aid a reshaping of China‘s economy as significant as the nation’s opening of its markets in the 1970s.

“A stronger, more market-determined” currency would “reinforce China’s reform objectives of moving to higher value-added production, reforming the financial system and encouraging domestic demand”, Geithner said yesterday at US-China talks in Beijing.

“Future economic growth will require another fundamental shift in economic policy” akin to that of more than 30 years ago, he said.

Premier Wen Jiabao‘s remarks in March that the yuan may be near an equilibrium and the currency’s failure to gain against the dollar this year suggest that Geithner could be disappointed.

Zhou Xiaochuan , governor of China’s central bank, said the market “has its own power to correct” any imbalances in the exchange rate. Zhou said he thought there were “no…