Li Ruogu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, also warned in an interview with the Financial Times that external pressure on China to abandon its decade-old de facto peg to the US dollar would only be counter-productive.

"Under heavy speculation we cannot move (towards greater flexibility) and under heavy external pressure we cannot," he said according to the report.

"So the best environment for us to gradually move towards a more flexible exchange rate is when people don't talk about it."

China has been under pressure for months to allow its currency, the yuan, to rise against the US dollar.

The pressure has mainly come from the United States, where it is widely held that the "cheap" yuan has cost American jobs on a massive scale.

Chinese officials have consistently resisted the pressure, with central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan saying at an international finance conference in Berlin over the weekend that it was too early to talk about a loosening of the peg.

(Source: AFP) [More Biz News]

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