China rebuts Obama on currency value

China on Thursday rejected US President Barack Obama's claim that its yuan currency was deliberately undervalued to support exports.

"What I want to stress is that the yuan exchange rate is never the main cause of China-US trade disputes. China never purposely seeks a trade surplus," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters, DPA reported.

"China has regarded ensuring the stability of the yuan as a major task," Ma said.

"We hope US will see the relevant issue in an objective and rational perspective," he said.

"Accusations and pressure are no help to resolving problems," Ma said.

At a conference in Washington on Wednesday, Obama said he favoured free "reciprocal" trade and would put pressure on China and other countries to open their markets to competition.

"One of the challenges that we've got to address internationally is currency rates ... to make sure that our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are (not) artificially deflated in price," Obama said, though he did not specifically mention China. "That puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage."

Obama said trade with China and the rest of Asia remained critical to the future growth of the US economy. Last week, he proposed doubling US exports within five years in a bid to revive the struggling labour market in the United States.

In a five-yearly economic report on China on Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) supported calls for China to allow faster appreciation of its currency.

Richard Herd, the lead author of the OECD report, said the Chinese government still feared that a rapid rise in the currency value could destabilize its economy.