China will greet this week's visit by a high-powered United States economic delegation very positively but the country will not allow its currency policy to be influenced by external pressure, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said yesterday.
'We are preparing to respond very positively,' the central bank's governor, Zhou Xiaochuan , said in Beijing yesterday. 'This is a very important dialogue and probably it will be good for policy co-ordination, the trade imbalance and many other issues.'
But assistant governor Yi Gang said China's currency was a sovereign issue and an adjustment would not automatically solve economic and trade imbalances.
China's trade surplus was US$22.9 billion last month, more than double the US$10.5 billion recorded in November last year. The surplus for the first 11 months reached US$157 billion, US$66 billion more in the same period last year.
Many US politicians blame China's currency regime for America's huge and growing bilateral trade deficit and the issue is expected to be a central theme when a delegation of seven cabinet-level US officials, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, meet more than a dozen Chinese ministers, including Vice-Premier Wu Yi and Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai , this week.
Critics say an undervalued currency allows China to sell goods to trading partners at prices so low they put other countries' manufacturers out of business.