PRESIDENT Hu Jintao has rebuffed United States calls to re-value the yuan, telling his American counterpart Barack Obama that reform of the currency would be done by China in accord with domestic interests.
Hu defended China's policy of pegging the yuan to the greenback at a Monday meeting with Obama in Washington DC and said changes to the exchange rate would not come from US pressure.
"Detailed measures for reform would be considered in the context of the world's economic situation, its development and changes as well as China's economic conditions," Hu told the US president. "It won't be advanced by any foreign pressure."
He said currency reform would come based on China's "own economic and social development needs."
With high US unemployment, Congress has been pushing the Obama administration to punish China for the yuan-dollar peg, a tactic some economists say keeps it undervalued and gives Chinese exports an unfair advantage.
Hu told Obama that a rise in the value of the yuan would not solve US economic problems.
"A renminbi appreciation would neither balance Sino-US trade nor solve the unemployment problem in the US," Hu said.
He reiterated his government's stand that China did not intentionally seek a trade surplus with the US and would buy more goods if Washington relaxed controls on exports of high-technology products.
White House National Security Aide Jeffrey Bader said Obama reiterated his view that there needed to be "a more market-oriented exchange rate."
Obama said the US respected China's sovereignty on the exchange-rate issue and hoped the two sides could find a solution through dialogue and cooperation.
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