WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration’s effort to increase pressure on China to overhaul its currency regime got less than rave reviews from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and key central bankers from China, Europe and Japan.

Greenspan disputed the contention of U.S. manufacturers that a revaluation of China’s yuan would make a significant impact on America’s soaring trade imbalances.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China’s central bank, rejected the administration’s contention that China was ready to move immediately to a more flexible currency. And Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, and Toshiro Moto, deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, both said the timing of any move should be left up to China.

The four men made their comments while appearing on a panel of central bank governors at a monetary conference being held in Beijing. Greenspan participated late Monday (Tuesday morning Beijing time) by satellite from Washington.

The administration did receive support on Tuesday from a key lawmaker on trade issues. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that he believed legislative pressure will probably be needed to get China to drop its tight peg to the dollar.

“We have to let China know, probably from a legislative position, that the administration’s recent exhortations are supported by the Congress,” Thomas said. He did not spell out what legislation he would support. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to impose across-the-board 27.5 percent tariffs on Chinese products if China does not act.

At the White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush met with a group of Chinese legislators on Tuesday and the currency issue was discussed.

“China has expressed a commitment to moving forward toward a flexible market-based exchange rate and we continue to urge them to move in that direction,” McClellan told reporters.

The Bush administration in recent weeks has intensified the pressure on China to stop linking the yuan at a fixed rate to the dollar, a practice that American manufacturers say has undervalued the yuan and given China a huge trade advantage.

Greenspan, however, said in response to an audience question that getting China to stop linking its currency tightly to the U.S. dollar would have little impact on America’s trade deficit with China, which hit a record $162 billion last year, the largest imbalance ever recorded with a single country.

“It certainly is not going to be a major impact” on America’s trade deficit, Greenspan said, asserting that any sales China loses in the United States would probably be made up by sales from other countries.

But Greenspan did argue it was in China’s interest and the interest of the global economy because it would end distortions in China’s monetary system and also make China’s economy more flexible.

“Allowing revaluation in some form is very much to the advantage of the Chinese and I am certain they will take it on reasonably soon,” the Fed chairman said.

Zhou told the conference that there was “too much expectation” about how a change in China’s currency practices would impact trade flows and the global economy. He also said that more reforms were needed to prepare for a change, a comment at odds with the Bush administration which in recent months has been insisting that China is ready to make the switch currently.

Trichet said China should decide on the timing of any currency move and that other nations need to do their part to support global growth, including higher savings rates in the United States and less impediments to growth in Europe and Japan.

Greenspan told the conference that he does not have a good explanation for why long-term interest rates have been falling at a time when he and his Fed colleagues have been raising short-term rates, a development he said was “clearly without recent precedent” and one he called in February a “conundrum.”

The Fed has boosted a key short-term rate, the federal funds rate, a total of eight times since last June 30, moving it up in quarter-point increments from a 46-year low of 1 percent to its current level of 3 percent.

But over that same time period, Greenspan noted, the yield on Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note has fallen from around 4.8 percent a year ago to around 4 percent currently.

Greenspan said the continued decline in long-term interest rates has not been a development just in the United States but in many other countries around the world.