China's central bank pledged on Monday to keep the newly unshackled yuan basically stable but urged fresh efforts to wean the economy off export-driven growth.
In a statement posted on its Web site after the third-quarter meeting of its monetary policy committee, the People's Bank of China said the country's fast-growing trade surplus was a problem for the economy.
"There should be concerted macro-policies to actively expand consumer demand and speed up restructuring the economy and international trade to improve economic efficiency and achieve sustainable economic growth and stable prices," the bank said.
The language reflects a hardening conviction in Beijing that China's growth model, powered by investment that is geared towards exports, leaves it vulnerable to a proliferation of trade barriers.
The United States has imposed quotas on a range of Chinese textile exports, and Beijing has reluctantly agreed to curbs on sales to the European Union.
China chalked up a trade surplus of $60.2 billion in the first eight months of the year, and economists expect the figure for the whole year to be triple the 2004 total of $32 billion.
The surging trade surplus is proof for many economists that the yuan remains too cheap despite a landmark 2.1 percent revaluation on July 21, when Beijing scrapped a 11-year-old dollar peg and adopted a managed float for the currency.
The authorities have since allowed the yuan, also known as the renminbi, to rise only fractionally. It closed at 8.09 per dollar on Monday.
This slow ascent has frustrated foreign critics, especially in Washington, but the central bank statement suggested Beijing is not about to throw caution to the wind.
"We should continue perfecting the managed float exchange rate regime and keep the renminbi exchange rate basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level," the bank said, repeating standard language on the authorities' exchange rate aims.
In the same vein, the bank said it would seek to maintain monetary policy "continuity and stability", albeit with undefined "pre-emptive adjustments and fine-tuning".
The statement said China's overall economic growth rate, which has been 9 percent or more in the past eight quarters, was easing a little but that fixed-asset investment in some sectors was still too strong.
The government has been using lending curbs and administrative orders for the past two years to rein in excessive investment in sectors such as autos, steel, cement and real estate.
At the same time it has been spending freely to overcome bottlenecks in the economy. Even so, the central bank said supplies of coal, oil and power were still quite tight.
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