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Stronger yuan not in China's interest, official says

A stronger yuan is not for the moment in China's national interest, a senior official from the Bank of China said here on Friday after the head of the IMF maintained that Beijing was ready for a re-adjustment of its currency.

"We have no interest in seeing the yuan strengthen," Zhu Min, executive assistant to the president of the Bank of China, told a conference organized by the Institute of International Finance.

His comment came hours after International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Rodrigo Rato told the conference that emerging market nations, particularly in Asia, should take further steps to ease their exchange rate mechanisms and described China as "technically ready" for a re-adjustment of the yuan.

Rato said emerging market nations should "further ease their exchange rates to gain better control of capital flows," and added that China, which has been under Western pressure to allow the yuan to float, could now technically accede to their wish.

US finance officials have been urging Beijing to ease the yuan-dollar peg, which they say undervalues the yuan and unfairly favors Chinese exports while making US exports to China more expensive.

But Zhu said that was not likely for the forseeable future, though he did acknowledge "symptoms of overheating" in the Chinese economy that Beijing was trying to contain.
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