China's currency won't be revalued this year, and investors who bet the government will let the yuan's value rise against the dollar risk losses, officials said.
"There's no chance of the yuan being revalued this year," Yao Jingyuan, chief economist at the National Bureau of Statistics, told reporters at a Beijing briefing.
"Anyone who tries to speculate on yuan appreciation will be burnt," added Li Deshui, a director of the bureau.
The comments came a day after China warned exporters against padding the amount of money they bring back to the country as some companies anticipate a revaluation.
China is resisting international pressure to allow more flexibility in the currency, and has said improvement in the banking sector is needed before it can relax its 8.3 yuan peg to the US dollar.
That hasn't deterred traders from increasing bets on the yuan in the forward markets or stopped ABN Amro NV, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and other investment banks from issuing reports predicting a revaluation this year.
"I'm reluctant to take this at face value," said James Malcolm, a currency analyst at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co in Singapore.
"China needs to move forward, it needs more flexibility" in its currency, he said.
US President George Bush, as well as European and Japanese officials, say the peg artificially cheapens China's exports, stoking trade deficits and job losses.
The US trade gap with China was a record US$103 billion last year, and economists expect it to be US$130 billion this year, more than four times larger than when the peg was introduced.
China's economy grew 9.9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago as companies such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp and Motorola Inc built more factories to meet surging consumer demand and rising export orders.
The world's sixth-largest economy accelerated from a revised 9.6 percent rate in the third quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said in Beijing.
GDP for last year rose 9.1 percent, the fastest in six years, to 11.7 trillion yuan (US$1.41 trillion).
"It's in China's best interest to revalue because it can it can help slow an economy that's really expanding too fast," said Michael Preiss, chief investment strategist at CFC Securities Ltd in Hong Kong, a unit of Switzerland-based CFC Group.
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