China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao blasted trade protectionism by his nation's trading partners Sunday and vowed not to yield to pressure to allow the Chinese yuan to appreciate. In an Internet interview with the official Xinhua news agency, Wen said his government would continue next year to implement macro-economic policies aimed at stimulating growth and fighting the global financial crisis. “The pressure on the yuan to appreciate is bigger and bigger ... we have been getting this and that kind of pressure to appreciate, but we refuse to yield,” Wen said in the webcast. “I told foreign friends, I said, ‘you are asking for us to allow the yuan to appreciate, while at the same time adopting all kinds of trade protectionism, actually you are trying to restrain China's development'.” The value of the Chinese currency, which has effectively been pegged to the US dollar since mid-2008, has been a bone of contention between Beijing and its Western trading partners, which say it is kept low to boost exports. “This could be a big issue facing us next year in our economic work,” Wen said. But he added: “I believe this year as major currencies around the world devaluated, that maintaining the value and stability of the yuan was a contribution to the international community.” He also lambasted a series of World Trade Organization disputes that have been filed against China this year, saying there were more such actions taken in 2009 than ever before. “They are using every kind of trade obstacle, which is really placing a lot of pressure on China's overseas oriented industries, especially exports,” Wen said without naming nations. Meanwhile, China would continue to prime pump the economy in 2010 after last year's four-trillion-yuan ($586-billion) stimulus package and policy efforts to boost domestic spending during the global slump, he said. “After a year of efforts by the people of our nation, we have stabilized the economy, stabilized employment and maintained social tranquility,” he said. “But the financial crisis is not over, there is still a lot of work to be done... ending our economic stimulus policies too early could spoil all that has been achieved and even worsen the situation.” He rejected foreign pressure to let Chinese currency rise and complained that trade protectionism by other governments was holding back the country's development. The complaint came as the plunge in consumer demand caused by the global crisis is aggravating disputes between China and trading partners including the United States and Europe over access to markets for tires, shoes and other goods. A key irritant is Beijing's currency controls, which Washington and other governments say keep its yuan undervalued, giving China's exporters an unfair price advantage and swelling its politically volatile trade surplus. Wen did not single out any country for criticism, but the United States has imposed antidumping duties on Chinese-made tires and some types of steel pipes while Europe is curbing imports of Chinese-made leather shoes. For its part, Beijing has launched an antidumping probe of imports of US autos.
