Premier Wen Jiabao had sharp words for Washington in his annual news conference Sunday, ceding little ground on China's currency policy and suggesting that U.S. efforts to boost its exports by weakening the dollar amounted to "a kind of trade protectionism."
The U.S. Web giant appears increasingly likely to shutter its Chinese-language search engine, a step that would remove one of the last major foreign players from the world's most populous and fastest-growing Internet market.
The currency has stayed stubbornly strong this year, confounding expectations and hurting attempts to revive the world's second-largest economy. Even Japan's prime minister has tried to talk down the currency, so far unsuccessfully.
