The United States seems serious about forcing a sharp and rapid appreciation of the Chinese currency. So serious in fact that the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and Senate Banking Committee passed two recent bills to this effect. The action is a clear indication of the way some Americans are thinking, bringing to the fore the belief that appreciating the renminbi will ease the U.S trade deficit with China and reduce the hammering being meted out to some U.S. industries. Xia Bin, Director of the Finance Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, chal-lenges the thinking in an article published in China Business News. Excerpts follow: