No hope of a meeting of minds at G20's Nanjing get-together

It is a mark of how important China now is to the global economy that today's Group of 20 conference on reforming the international financial system is not being held in France, which is currently chairing the organisation, but in Nanjing.

And it is a sign of just how vital reform is that a roll-call of the most influential figures in world finance are attending - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chinese vice-premier and economic supremo Wang Qishan, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, European Central Bank governor Jean-Claude Trichet and International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, among others.

But it is a signal of how little the gathering is expected to achieve that the organisers aren't even planning to issue a communique at the end of the meeting.

The problem is that while everyone recognises the global financial system is in deep trouble, no national government is prepared to acknowledge that its policies may be partly to blame.

As a result, Chinese officials refuse to accept that the undervaluation of the yuan may have played a role in creating today's global economic imbalances and have ruled out any discussion of Beijing's exchange rate policy. To them, the big problem is the way the American government is debasing the US dollar by printing money.

In their turn, American officials reject the idea that the US government's deficit and the Fed's quantitative easing are a threat to the financial system. In their view, the source of the problem is China's savings glut and its undervalued currency.