Beijing: China's commerce minister Chen Deming said today he expected the nation's currency, the yuan, would remain stable in the absence of any major disturbances in the international financial system. "If there s no major change to the overall international economic environment, and if everybody continues to work together in a serious manner to deal with the ongoing financial crisis, I think we will still be able to keep (the yuan) stable," he said. Chen made the remark amid pressure from the United States for the yuan to appreciate more quickly.
"China will persist in the principle of exchange rate reform," Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, had said earlier. "There's no change whatsoever." Both men made their comments on the sidelines of the bi-annual Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue, a meeting currently seeking to find ways to cooperate on tackling the global economic crisis.
US Treasury chief Henry Paulson and his team pressured China earlier today to allow the yuan to appreciate after the Chinese currency had weakened against the dollar in recent days. "On the US side we certainly emphasised the importance in our view of continued currency reform and that currency reform is important for continuing to rebalance China's economy," a senior US government official said. The yuan has appreciated by about 20 per cent against the dollar since being de-pegged from the US currency in 2005.
