Market confidence in yuan drives record high

The Chinese yuan rose Wednesday to its highest level since 1993 when China first reformed its foreign exchange system, as the markets bet on the further rise of the yuan amid expectations of economic recovery.

Meanwhile, a government think tank said Wednesday that China needs to keep its currency exchange rate stable in the short term to ease the burden on the country's exporters.

The spot yuan rate closed at 6.1192 against the dollar Wednesday, the strongest level since the country unified the market exchange rates at the end of 1993, data from the China Foreign Exchange Trade System showed.

Before the start of trading, the central bank set its central parity rate of the yuan against the US dollar to 6.1726 on Wednesday, 0.04 percent stronger than Tuesday's 6.1753. The spot rate was 0.86 percent stronger than the central bank's fixing, compared with the maximum 1 percent daily trading band limit.

"Market sentiment brightened at the improvement of July's economic data and a series of recent government measures to stabilize the economy. The markets still expect the yuan to rise, that's why the rate hit a record high," Li Youhuan, an economist at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences (GASS), told the Global Times Wednesday.

"The market expectations of a stronger dollar that immediately followed the US announcement of a possible plan to withdraw from the quantitative easing have waned. There is no doubt the market is more confident with the yuan," Zhao Yongsheng, a visiting scholar with the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

The record-high level of the yuan spot rate triggered ­speculations that the central bank is testing the waters for an imminent move to expand the yuan's trading range.

In April 2012, the People's Bank of China widened the ­yuan's trading band against the US dollar to 1.0 percent above or below a daily reference exchange rate from its previous 0.5 percent limit.

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange said Monday that the country will steadily ­advance convertibility under the capital account.

"The movement of the yuan rate is still within the normal range and cannot be ­interpreted as an imminent widening of the yuan's trading band," Li Huiyong, chief economist at Shenyin Wanguo Securities, told the Global Times Wednesday. "The band will be widened to 2 percent sometime in the second half but not immediately."

"The central parity rate of the yuan is still stable and the spot rate is unlikely to rise significantly in the short term because exporters are having a difficult time and their plight cannot support the further rise of the yuan exchange rate," Li at GASS said.

China's foreign trade will further decline in the second half of the year, with exports ­expected to rise around 9 percent year-on-year in 2013, according to a report released Wednesday by the State Information Center under the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner.

The report said China should keep its yuan exchange rate stable in the short term.

Yan Yuantong, a salesman at Jinjiang-based Hongshun Children's Goods Co in Fujian Province, which exports toys to Europe, told the Global Times that the company's profit growth has dropped 3 percentage points from last year due to the continuous appreciation of the yuan and rising costs.