Geithner to China: Your Assets Are Safe

Tim Geithner began his trip to China with a speech at Peking University, where the Treasury secretary said that once the current recession and financial crisis are over, the administration will bring down soaring fiscal deficits. But students at the college where Geithner himself once studied peppered him with tough questions about the fate of their country's US Treasury investments. "Chinese financial assets are safe," he insisted.

Geithner is seeking to reassure China, the US's biggest creditor, that the Obama administration is committed to attacking the nation's rapidly climbing debt. After speaking at Peking he held talks with Chinese officials, during which he offered lavish praise for the country's economic progress and de-emphasized past disputes—in particular, the American claim that China has kept its currency undervalued. (More Timothy Geithner stories.)