The Chinese government will decide the pace at which its currency rises, and China isn't under external pressure on the matter, local media reported Monday, citing comments from central bank Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations that ended Saturday.
Zhou's comments come after China agreed to allow international scrutiny of its much-criticized exchange rate policy in the face of unified opposition from other G-20 members, including from emerging nations that previously backed Beijing.
China wants to internationalize its currency gradually, and there hasn't been any change in Beijing's stance since the central bank announced the policy in 2009, the state-run China Daily also cited Zhou as saying.
"We rely mostly on our own judgement in making adjustments to the value of the yuan," the Oriental Morning Post cited Zhou as saying. "We've never paid special attention to outside pressure."
At the same time, Zhou vowed to use all available means to fight inflation, including the exchange rate, according to the reports.
China's central bank said on Friday it will raise banks' reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage point, the second such hike this year, after Beijing guided the yuan to record highs ahead of the G-20 meetings.
On Monday, the yuan rose to CNY6.5660 against the U.S. dollar, its highest level under the current system, after the People's Bank of China set the yuan's daily reference rate at a record high of CNY6.5705 to the U.S. dollar.
China has allowed the yuan to appreciate at an annual rate of around 6% against the U.S. dollar since mid-June, when it effectively ended its currency's two-year-long peg to the dollar and vowed to make the yuan more flexible.
Accounting for the different levels of inflation in China and the U.S., the yuan is rising around 10% a year against the U.S. dollar, although the U.S. and other countries say that still isn't enough.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said earlier that China is fueling its own inflation by holding down the value of its currency and that it is in China's own best interests to allow the yuan to rise.
After years of resistance, China gave its qualified approval to international scrutiny of its much-criticized exchange-rate policy at the G-20 meeting in Paris on Saturday, paving the way for an agreement that sets the parameters for an economic alarm system.
China's consumer price index rose 4.9% in January from a year earlier, picking up from December's 4.6% rise.
