China will stick to its current exchange rate policy and aim to maintain market stability, Yi Gang, a central bank official, said last Saturday in Turkey, who was there for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting. "Our exchange rate policy is very clear."

"We welcome China's continued commitment to move to a more flexible exchange rate, which should lead to continued appreciation of the Renminbi in effective terms and help promote more balanced growth in China and in the world economy," the G7 said.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said last Thursday his nation wants China to speed up the process of relaxing restrictions on the yuan. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn repeated last Friday that his organization believed the yuan was undervalued.

However, China showed no sign on Saturday of heeding the G7's pressure. When being asked about the outside pressure to let the yuan appreciate, Yi said: "We will continue our policy setting."

China has said it was in the process of reforming its exchange rate system to allow the yuan to move more flexibly, but that it will not allow moves that could destabilize its economy.

China abolished a yuan peg to the US dollar in 2005 and linked its currency to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen, euro and the US dollar.

"We have an exchange rate setting of a managed float with reference to a basket of currencies and based on a market mechanism," Yi said. "We will continue this mechanism while at the same time maintaining the stability of the market."

Yi also reiterated on Saturday that China had no plans for monetary policy tightening anytime soon. "We will maintain the stability and continuity of monetary policy."